This One's On You
by mgsylvester
Summary: The five things that made Tony Stark hate Captain America and the one time that made him change his mind.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: I've seen like a billion of these Five Plus One stories, so I thought I'd try my hand at one of my own. ****I don't ship Stony romantically, but I love their relationship. It's just so... _complicated_. It's delicious. Anyway, if you want to see parts of this as pre-slash, or simply pre-bromance, or see it like I see it, as a ,** _we're-best-friends-but-we-don't-know-it-because-we're-too-busy-hating-each-other _**then go ahead. **

**Rated: T for language, and quite a bit of Tony feeling sorry for himself, and even a little bit of child sadness which is heartbreaking in and of itself. No spoilers, other than general ones. (Like, _Avengers _spoilers, and I'm assuming you've all already seen the movie)**

**Disclaimer: It was un-betaed so any mistakes are my own. I also don't own the characters. Just, you know, in case you thought I did. **

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><p>If there was one thing Tony Stark knew in this whole entire world, it was that it was past his bedtime.<p>

He'd been tucked in by their newest nanny hours ago, left with nothing but a simple shush and blankets half-hazardly rucked up to his chin. But there was something going on downstairs and _please, just this once, can I come? _She'd hushed him once more and parted with one withering glare. It was an adult party. Not something for little kids.

Please. He wasn't a little kid.

He was eight years old and had now been tying his own shoelaces for two years. He hardly slept with a nightlight anymore. He's already started some of his own designs, though most of them were flawed. He was going to get them right sooner or later. If he worked hard enough, then maybe it would work. Sometimes at night he would dream of jetpacks that would take him to the stars. Something his could wrap around his shoulders and paint words into the sky.

_Look at me, Daddy._

_ Are you proud of me yet?_

But for now he was still alone, fighting back yawns as he crouched in the servant's stairwell behind the kitchen in Stark Mansion. The walls were thin here, and he could hear his father. Maybe if he was quiet enough, if he didn't move and held his breath, he could just sit there and listen to Dad's voice all night. That rarity was better than sleep. He didn't need sleep. He needed this.

It was dark in the stairwell, decidedly cold, and Tony only had the comfort of one of his favorite stuffed animals. Tony wanted with all his heart to creek open the door and dash across the kitchen. He wanted to interrupt the party with a quick _Daddy I had a nightmare_ and find comfort in warm arms and doting breath.

He knew better.

He knew that it would only end with a rough tug of the arm as he was dragged up the stairs, a brief, sharp scolding at the top, and one coarse shove back toward his room. A hissed, "Don't ever do that again, Anthony," in that voice Tony was all too familiar with. Disappointment. _You'll never be the man your father is, _his mom might say. Never good enough, never smart enough. _Never enough_.

This time he had better chances, as Mom wasn't home. She was somewhere and Tony hadn't been told where, hadn't gotten a goodbye hug. Maybe she would bring him back something, candies or some new toy car he could fiddle with. Or maybe, just maybe, she'd come back with nothing material, but just _something_.

Eight year olds aren't supposed to feel this alone. They are supposed to have adoring parents and perfect lives and the boo-boos are always supposed to be kissed.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut and leaned harder against the wall, trying to envelop himself in the warm atmosphere of the low voices on the other side. They were jovial, half-slurred, _alive. _He could pick out his father's voice among the din, slow and deliberate and deep. He knew that his father was drunk, but the way that his words slurred together without the underlying presence of animosity was an odd sound to him. Addictive, but odd.

"You remember Rome?" His father laughed, and a cacophony of laughs followed.

Tony squinted. Rome was in Italy, right? He didn't know where, but maybe tomorrow he could look it up on a map. Maybe he and his jetpack could scoop him and Mom and Dad up and bring them there. Mom was Italian. Dad liked Rome. Maybe they would be happier there.

"Best weekend of the whole war," A different voice, decidedly accented, commented. Tony didn't know this voice. He couldn't place the accent. It made him feel cold.

More laugher, more bright warmth radiating through the walls.

"That son of a bitch drank, what, thirty shots? Didn't even burp." A third voice, more American, not anymore comforting. "He drank Bucky under the table."

"And the rest of us were all piss-ass drunk in the first place." Dad put in, and Tony could almost see the smile on his father's face. It was so happy and foreign that Tony felt tears long abated prick against his eyes once more.

"How did we even get into that brothel, anyway?" The accent asked, curious and devious.

The question went unanswered, and glasses clinked against Maria's prized granite countertops and laugher bubbled out like champagne.

"Not one of your finest moments, boys." A woman. Not mom. But still familiar. Aunt Peggy. She was around every now and then, always slinking into Howard's office holding manila paperwork and talking in a low voice when they both thought Tony wasn't around to hear.

It's not like it mattered that he saw. He was insignificant anyway.

The laughter grew at her comment, and Tony gouged fingertips into the wall, leaning forward, soaking up every dredge of the sun-stained sound and it was so beautiful that it _hurt_.

He never knew want this primal, this feral _need _that made him shift on the creaky stairs and clench his muscles in desperate anticipation. He felt like an animal. Not only an animal, but a sea turtle, one that was left in the hot sand to fester and grow, and when it hatched it clawed its way through the lonely sand back toward the surf, where one day, it would perhaps be reunited with the ones that created him.

Sea turtles are alone from the moment they take their first steps into the world. Their mother leaves them buried in the sand for months. Maybe tomorrow when the light touched the earth again, Tony could get a book and look up the science behind that. There had to be an explanation. There was always a reason.

Suddenly, the noise stopped, so quickly that Tony felt its absence even more than he felt his own heart, beating in his chest. The laughter faded and the silence that followed was empty and full at the same time.

"If he could see us now, Peg." His father, now wistful, his voice old and filled with something that could only be called nostalgia. Tony could imagine it. A half smile. A face turned away. Eyes looking but no longer seeing. He'd seen this emotion once before.

But as quickly as it came, another comment sent the group back into giggles once more. "He'd probably think we're 'fondueing'" A hint of irony at the last word, the shuffling of paper.

"Shut it, Stark." Peggy replied evenly, "He still owes me a dance."

"Cute, but he owes me twelve hundred grams of vibranium alloy. I win." Dad said.

And there it was. That warmth again. Something so deep and so delicate that Tony had never experienced the sensation before. Something that made his eyes water and his chest claw against his skin, screaming, howling, wanting out. _I want my daddy._

It tasted like burned sugar against his tongue. Sweet with an undertone of wrong, all _wrong_.

Tony clutched his stuffed, plush toy to his chest and pretended it was alive. Pretended that it loved him back.

"What a world we live in." A voice said in amazement. _If he could only see us now, Peg_.

Tony had zoned out of the conversation for a moment, letting it all sink into his frail, young skin, and now was confused as to what they were talking about. It didn't really matter much. It just mattered that it was _there_; that somewhere, somehow, there was a light in this world, and with it came the potential it could touch him.

Another yawn and he lost track of the conversation again. It was hard for him to focus, sitting on those hard stairs in the dark. He wished he could just soak through the wall and find his way on the other side. Finally be a part of something. Finally belong. Live in a place in which conversations like that happened.

There was only a wall between them, but they were still worlds away.

"…loved him."

"We all did. Then the bastard had to go and save the world."

Tony let his small forehead rest against the cool plaster of the wall. Something clicked inside his mind, and he found his memory drifting over dust-covered comics and well-used copies of old film.

They were talking about Captain America. Tony knew the story, it was, after all, one of Dad's favorite things to bring up. _You think I flew Captain America thirty miles over enemy miles under anti-aircraft fire for _this? Y_ou should show me some respect, boy. _

Tony looked down at the toy in his hands. "This one's on you, Cap." He whispered, and maneuvered the small animal to a mock-salute position.

Because Dad was leaving again, soon. Dad was going to find him this time. Things would get better then. Because Captain America would be found and that, cruelly, strangely, would answer all of Tony's questions. If that man was found then his father could rest and actually _be _a dad. Tony wouldn't have to need his daddy so much because his daddy would simply be there.

The animal jumped from his lap, dancing across the air like the hero he was, because Captain America could save the world.

Captain America could save his family.

But the conversation continued on, and all the while, the eight-year-old was still alone in the stairwell.

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><p><strong>AN: For those of you who have read <em>Catch-22<em> by Joseph Heller, you'll see where I got my muse from.**

**Anyway, reviews? Do you think I captured sad-child!Tony well enough? **


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: This one is short, but they get progressively longer after this.**

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><p>"You're not going to find him."<p>

Fifteen years old, now, and a hundred times more skeptical, Tony Stark stood at the bow of the ship and let his breath come out in white puffs.

"What is this, the fifth time you've looked?" His tone colored, making his words unpleasant. It was summer, for God's sake, and hadn't planned on spending it on a boat, freezing to death. He had projects to finish and awards to accept and two more semesters to prepare for. "The asshole is dead. Get over it." His words were gritty. Blunt. Harsh.

True.

"Anthony." A dark word, one that used to send shivers down his spine. If it did this time, well, it was too cold to feel it. "Don't." Dad didn't say more because there were witnesses, and the Stark family was perfect. The essence of American domestic perfection. Untouchable and beautiful and better-than-you in all ways possible.

Another question bubbled at his throat, but it died as he watched a small detached iceberg float by the slow-moving barge. He wanted to know where Mom was if they were, indeed, the perfect family.

The answer was simple. Captain America was a relic of the past, a passion that his father and his mother didn't share. (The only reason _he_ was here was because the nanny had quit and it was considered reckless abandonment if they left him alone for three months. It was silly legal stuff, really.) Mom didn't care that Dad was clinging desperately onto a hope that had frozen years ago, because that hope was before her time. In fact, she didn't care much about Howard's passions. Tony had learned long ago that his parents' marriage was little more than a business deal. Howard had the money and Maria had the cunning and together they made a team, not a couple.

His parents didn't love each other. It was something that had once kept him awake at night, wondering what he had done to push them apart. Between forgotten dreams of Rome and stars, he would wonder _where is Mom _and _how can I bring her back_. He would blame himself for the drinking and the separate bedrooms and wonder what it was that he did so terribly wrong that they hated each other. What it was like to bring home a test and have parents that tacked it to the fridge and took him out to dinner for it. Then one day, on the precipice of maturity and in the throngs of something people call an epiphany, he figured it out. It was less an epiphany, however, than finally acknowledging the truth at face value. His parents didn't hate each other.

His parents hated _him_.

His existence alienated them from one another; everything he did and stood for and loved, every piece, every atom, every molecule he was made of, made them abhor him and thus each other. They had tolerated each other before him, back when their relationship was still mutually beneficial. But children are symbols of love. Children are messy and dirty and innocent and vulnerable, and children are a result of mistakes and marriage and two hearts combining as one.

If he thought about it that way, then he was one major fuck-up on their part.

So he doesn't let their marital problems keep him awake at night anymore. It's not like he can help the fact that he _exists_. It's not his fault he wasn't born invisible. It wasn't his fault that they treated him as such. It was, simply, the fault of fate that such an unwanted child fell into the laps of unaccepting parents.

In the end, it explained a lot. It explained why Howard never had anything but criticism for the things Tony did, how Tony had been pushed into this play-dough mold trying to please his father. It explained how every failure was a cliff and every success was a molehill.

But a kid who never gets attention wants it all the more. So every insult, every alcohol-slickened roll of the eyes, made Tony try that much harder.

Maybe if he was a better person, then maybe they would hate him less.

Maybe if Dummy had, indeed, been programmed a bit differently, that bolt gone _there _instead of _there_, the equilibrium had been achieved just a few milliseconds earlier, like his father had suggested, maybe Tony could at least earn his respect.

Tony thought about Steve Rogers, the one man that Howard Stark respected in his lifetime. _What makes us different? _

_Everything_. Everything made them different.

And in the end, Tony couldn't compete with that. He would never be the hero, instead, he would be the disappointment.

So he gazed out across the frozen tundra of the arctic, having long ago given up the hope of finding an anomaly in the ice. There was only white, flat, frozen ocean. Nothing there. Nothing would ever be there. Finding Captain America and having the man fix all of his father's problems was nothing more than an eight-year-old pipe dream conjured up by the loneliness of the darkness. Because Captain America _had _saved the world, and now he was dead. _Dead_. So he'd already done enough saving, and thus his family would not be saved.

It's not like he could save them anyway. They were far past that point.

You can't fix something that _wants _to be broken.

Besides, Tony didn't even want to find the man anymore. If he was a "useless piece of shit" now then what would he be when the big, bad, serum-perfected, paragon of perfect came back?

Regardless, Tony fixed his sharp, knowing eyes across the ice. "This one's on you, Cap." He whispered, his hard voice getting lost with the howling din of the wind, where it was swept across a forgotten wasteland of frozen fear.

"Tony, come over here. I want to show you something."

Tony swallowed, spared one last glance at the hopeless cold, and turned back to his father.

Inside the ice, the man slumbered on.

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><p><strong>AN: Somewhere in the midst of writing this fic it turned from angst into...this. I was like "Hey, instead of fighting, they should <em>feel<em>." Anyway, this one is less sad and more teenage-regret, so that's something. SO, that being said, Cap comes in next chapter, and things get...interesting from there. Anyway, these will go in chronological order, and they will all get tied together in the end. **

**I would really appreciate it if you reviewed! Thank you :D**

**To those that have already reviewed:**

**Acae: Thank you so much! You made my whole day with that review. *smiles dreamily***

**Iron Robin: Thank you for the complement. The whole heart-hurt was the goal, I suppose. Anyway, you'll see why it was the goal in chapters to come. **

**therealdreamtheives: Yay! I nailed sad Tony! Thank you so much! I'm such a bad judge of my own writing, so it helps a bunch if you tell me when the characters are well-written/OOC/whatever. Thank you!**

**InfinityMars: Thank you! Most of this fic is my interpretation of their whole relationship, and trust me, it gets more complicated from here. **

**TheJollyMonster: Don't we all. Maybe we all can just give RDJ a hug and call it good. (I bet he smells good...was that creepy? Nah. Not _that _creepy...) **


	3. Chapter 3

***Violently pretends Civil War is not a thing.***

***VIOLENTLY PRETENDS CIVIL WAR IS NOT A THING***

_***vIoLEnTly PreTeNds CIvIL waR Is NOt a thINg***_

***Sobs***

**That being said, let's begin.**

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><p>Tony learned that he was good at instant hatred.<p>

"Mister Stark." The man had the nerve to greet him in such a cool way, like he _wasn't the reason his childhood was so fucked up_. Like Tony's father's obsession with science and war wasn't the thing that drove them all apart.

Uh oh.

This wasn't good.

"Captain." This was a very weird, very surreal feeling. It was like Tony was in a dream or a hallucination. He didn't really know what else to say to him. This was a man of legend, not a person of reality.

Maybe that was why his stomach had gone cold. Maybe that's why he was scrambling for words for the first time in a very long time. Until Coulson had oh-so-casually handed him those files, the idiot had been _dead_. Dead and buried and gone, just like every other part of Tony's past.

Everything was stirring up again.

_Your father was a good man._ Aunt Peggy had told him that, a long, long time ago, crossing the green grass of the cemetery to put a hand on his shoulder. _He let it blind him_.

_Let what blind him?_

She smiled at him, wrinkles already forming near the corners of her eyes, her hair still a fine brown. _Everything_. She said, finally, eyes ghosting toward the twin headstones.

Tony had once lauded Captain America for all the lives he had saved, but now he only knew Captain America for the life he had ruined. His.

So maybe that was self-centered and irrational, but who would call Tony Stark anything other than selfish and rash? Someone needed to be the scapegoat. At fifteen Tony had already concluded that he himself wasn't to blame. But now in his middle age he knew that the blame needed to fall on someone. His parents hadn't just hated him for _no _reason. There was always a reason. Every equation has a proof after all. Even after all these years, the potential that his neglect was reasonless was unfathomable.

Now, Tony fought back the words at the back of his throat. He wanted to say something rude, something coarse. Start a fight. See if that serum really was all that his father described it as.

The way he saw it now, Steve Rogers was just a man. He was breathing and talking and his eyes weren't glazed on a piece of paper or diluted by the sepia of old film. He was a 3-D form in a 3-D world and he had mass and gravitational pull and a heart that beat. There was nothing extraordinary about him. Who the fuck even _was _this guy?

Tony didn't want to be on his team. His father was the Commando, and Tony was going to be damned if he let Captain America boss him around like Howard did. He was going to be damned if he threw out everything that ever cared about for a man like this. A man who didn't deserve it. A man who was _just a man_. Steve fucking Rogers.

This was all such a joke. Standing next to him was the man for which Tony Stark should be having a fanboy heart attack, but all Tony could think of was his perverse wish that Cap could sleep for another seventy years.

And maybe there was more to this feeling, dwelling underneath the surface. Maybe this animosity was less at the man himself but more about what he stood for. Who he stood for.

And yet here he was, calm and cool and strong, eyes flicking to his own briefly, but keeping trained on the Norse God in front of them.

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><p>Tony couldn't help himself.<p>

His default was annoying quips, and instead of the usual hey-how-are-you bit and the you-knew-my-father-wow-awkward conversation, Steve talked business and Tony made fun of him. (He still wasn't exactly over the shock of it all, otherwise he would have probably been meaner.)

"I still don't like it."

"What, Rock of Ages giving up that easily?" If Tony thought hard enough Cap was probably right. There were a few punches thrown, half a verse of "Shoot To Thrill" and then Loki was surrendering. Something was definitely off about this and it (obviously) didn't take a genius to figure out.

"I don't remember it being that easy." Cap wasn't even breathing all that heavily when Tony had touched down next to him. "This guy packs a wallop."

Tony almost laughed. "Still you were pretty spry, for an older fellow." He dug in with his words, hoping idly that it hurt him, disguising the insult inside the compliment. Which was ridiculous because once Captain America comics had fueled his life. Tony used to stay up later than he was allowed just to crouch underneath the covers and read. "What's your thing? Pilates?"

The look of confusion wasn't really what Tony was hoping for but it was good enough. "What?" The word made something in Tony's veins heat up.

This jackass had _literally _missed _everything_. _  
><em>

"It's like Calisthenics. You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle."

"Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in." Cap replied darkly, which showed that Tony must have touched a nerve somewhere. It was more of a _don't open up this can of worms right now, Stark_ nerve than anything else, because Steve had probably realized by now that Tony's outright cruelty had some sort of backing and it probably had something to do with Howard. There was a part of Tony that wanted to press the subject, to open up that nerve and watch it throb. To provoke and annoy and watch as everything burned.

"Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you." He said, but that didn't even _begin _to cover it.

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><p>"Then prove it. Put that hammer down." Steve said and <em>woah <em>his voice was commanding. It was weird to think that he was like this during the war. When Howard knew him.

Tony couldn't help his own immaturity sometimes, so maybe this whole fight was a result of his inability to be a productive member of society and, you know, confront his emotional scars. But they don't have Shea butter for that kind of crap so instead he was goading on a thousand year old god about a little cube of energy.

"Uh, yeah, no! Bad call. He loves his hammer."

"You want me to put the hammer down?" Thor called and time slowed as the man went after his new enemy with his giant metal square of electricity. It hit vibranium and trees cracked all around him. For a moment, the sensation of pure energy around him was terrifying and Tony was flung away. And then the haze cleared and the suit fuzzed and came around again, and Cap was the only one still standing.

"Are we done?" He asked, scolding, like he was dealing with two children that have had a temper tantrum.

Something inside Tony screamed.

_Where were you and that voice when it was needed? Where were you when _I _needed you? Why'd you have to fucking crash into godforsaken nowhere? Why couldn't my father give you up? What's so special about _you? _Why was it _you?

_Why couldn't it have been me_?

(He ignores the fact that those questions probably should have been directed toward his father)

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><p>Oh boy, if he was wrong before in hating the man then he was definitely correct now.<p>

It wasn't even about his father anymore.

It wasn't about his family or the past, it was about the here and now, and about the fact that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers were two very different men. They were two poles on the same magnet, similar, but different in all the ways that counted.

"Big man in a suit if armor, take that away, what are you?"

Tony responded in a quip. He was awesome. He built himself from the ashes of his childhood and look what he had now. A reputation. Fans. Multiple billions of dollars. Women. (Pepper.) Iron Man.

But Steve, cunning little asshat that he was, knew exactly where it hurt and he pressed the wound until Tony was bleeding on the inside. "I know guys with none of that worth ten of you."

Captain America was a dick.

Captain America could save the world by lying down on the live wire.

Tony Stark could just cut the wire.

He was infamous for that ability.

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><p>Tony learned that he was very, very good at finding a grudge and holding onto it.<p>

When it was all over, when his eyes opened and the words "We won" were the first words on everyone's lips, Steve helped him up.

Tony was still shaking. When he breathed he felt like his lungs were on fire because he could never really get enough air. He needed a drink and he probably needed medical attention. But first he needed to clear his head, because he was still babbling about Shawarma and he wasn't even sure if that was a word or not.

When his weight shifted onto his feet he realized with distanced clarity that his legs were made of jelly, and all of the iron (titanium alloy, whatever) in the world couldn't hold him up.

His feet found purchase on the earth but he still was in the heavens.

He was falling again.

This time the drop wasn't as far, but he still had someone to catch him. "Woah buddy." The voice was soft and concerned. "You still with me?"

"What? Yeah. Yeah, let's just get the food. Space makes you hungry. You ever notice that? Maybe it was the fall. I think I left my stomach contents somewhere around the ten thousandth mile." He babbled on, only vaguely coherent. His metallic arm was being thrown over a strong shoulder, and someone was adjusting his dragging feet. "You think the Shawarma place is still open? I mean, I might close if it was the end of the world. Spend time with, you know…" Tony cut off, suddenly choking on his own words. _I just fell from the fucking sky_.

"Tony." Steve said again, and Tony glanced upwards toward the sooty face of salvation. "Look at me."

"Looking." Tony mumbled, finally feeling his brain connect with his body. Steve was supporting all of his weight at the moment while the others looked on. Bruce was still hulked out, but his body was shuddering as the anger died. There was debris everywhere.

"Now look at your feet." Steve commanded, his voice holding the semblance of an order.

Tony's face screwed up and his eyes rolled downward. Vertigo hit him and he lolled forward, his brain whirling because _woah that's far. _ Steve's hold tightened.

"You see your feet?" Steve was saying, but Tony's breath was quickening, his chest tightening uncomfortably. He couldn't breathe he couldn't think he couldn't breathe he couldn't… "You're standing on hard ground, Tony. You're not falling." Steve's own foot kicked out, catching a rock. It clattered as it spun away from the pair. Clack. Clack. Clack. "Gravity keeps you rooted here. Just keep breathing. You're not falling."

Tony felt the panic inside him, and something else, something deeper, trickle in. Something he didn't have a name for. It diluted the fear and his lungs loosened slightly.

Consciousness slammed into his lower body, and he found himself shifting his weight onto his feet. The ground beneath him was solid. He was not falling. He was not alone. Just keep breathing. He was not falling. Inhale. He was not alone. Exhale. He was not falling.

He realized the mantra in his head was not his own thoughts but murmured words coming from Steve. They wove themselves into a melody until Tony was standing by himself, the fear dwindling. He found himself shaking, wobbling, but strong enough to stand, and Steve's mantra died out.

Tony looked at Steve, really looked at his pinched, concerned look. He compared it to the black and white snapshot of the Howling Commandos, smiling, goofing off like soldiers were supposed to. _You are not alone. You are not falling._ And Tony knew that Steve wasn't just helping him for the hell of it, or because he was a good person. Steve was speaking from his own experiences; probably voicing the things that he wished someone had told him.

Tony realized that he had found someone with a core of loneliness and, _fuck_, if it wasn't like looking into a mirror.

"You okay?" Steve was asking.

Tony cleared his throat, his eyes finally adjusting to the scene around him. He felt stable. He felt as close to _okay_ as he would probably get. "Yeah." He said, "Still hungry though."

Steve's smile cracked through his face for a moment, and then he tipped his head back and looked up to the sky for a few moments. Tony didn't follow his gaze, instead focused only on keeping his breathing regular. "Listen, Stark…" Steve began, bringing his eyes back to earth. "About earlier? I'm sorry."

"What?" This was perhaps both the worst moment to bring it up and the only appropriate time to do so. Tony didn't like talking things out, and getting all gushy about emotions. He figured that was what alcohol was for. But Steve, apparently, good ol' Steve, wanted to hash this out right now.

"I was out of line." Steve insisted, "and very, very wrong. I don't… I don't know why I…" He cut off, abruptly. Whatever he was going to say, Steve chose to take another direction. "I was out of line. And that's on me, okay?"

"Cap…" Tony felt another panic attack at the edges of his subconscious, and he wasn't sure if this one was from the fall or something different entirely. The sudden respect he had for Captain America began to dwindle, as if someone shorted the "Empathy" fuse inside him. Part of it was the shame, the fact that he'd just very nearly broken down and _Stark men don't break, Anthony. _The other part was what he would call logic, but the rest of the world would call insanity. He figured that since, like, ten minutes ago he swore he would beat the shit out of the man as soon as he could, he shouldn't go back on that promise now.

"Look, we didn't hit it off well. And that's my fault. It's just…" He shook his head, and Tony wondered what was rolling around behind those baby blue eyes. "Things have changed." Something about the sentence didn't hit him quite right. Something about the past and the present, all mushed together into one, left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Still breathless and wounded, Tony asked, "What's that supposed to mean?" The empathy left as quick as the panic did, replaced with the all-too familiar anger. Of course the bastard was going to take the high road and be the better man. Of freaking course. Now that his head was back on straight, he was hating the man with a renewed fervor. For helping him up. For apologizing. For just generally being alive, really. Tony scoffed. "You know what? Screw you."

Steve managed to look affronted, "What? Tony, I'm trying to apologize."

"Right." He shucked a few fingers through his hair. It would take so much more than an apology. "You can take that apology and shove it straight up your ass, Rogers."

Steve opened his mouth just to close it again. He looked at Tony for a few moments. Then, the tension broke like ice when Steve broke the eye contact and looked toward the ground, huffing one laugh out his nose. Tony might have asked what the hell was so funny, had the laugh been not been entirely without mirth.

Steve, still not looking at him, shook his head. "You still want Shawarma?" He swallowed and took a step away. "Lead the way."

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><p><strong>AN: LET'S JUST NOT TALK ABOUT CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, OKAY?<strong>

**Anyway, yay for more angst! Hopefully, it was obvious that this was a compilations of scenes from the actual movie. Now that they've actually met, and it's been well established that they aren't best of friends, things will digress from here. If any of you guys haven't seen _Avengers _as many times as I have (as in, like 5 cazillion) and didn't understand some parts, feel free to drop me a line so I can revise this! (Obviously the last part is from my own head, but everything else is straight from the movie.)**

**Please review? I live for you guy's feedback. For some reason I was really nervous to post this chapter. **

**To those that have already reviewed:**

**Guest: Thank you! I've been trying to keep Tony science-oriented, somewhat. I think that adds an interesting facet to his character, the always-trying-to-include-science thing.**

**Huskygirl1998: Thank you so much! Hopefully I haven't disappointed you with this, and if in any way I have, there's totally more coming.**

**masterlokiseverus159: *blushes* thank you! **

**sailorraven34: Thank you. I was aiming for the "oh no" face.**

**Iron Robin: I totally understand where you're coming from. I'm the quiet kid from a family of rambunctious Italians. But things will get happy in this at some point, and I hope that happens with you, as well.**

**Qweb: Thank you! It helps that, you know, I have experience being a teenager. **

**TheJollyMonster: Ok, yeah, you're right. But, now that you've brought ****it up I'm wondering about it... I'll just go ahead and stop now. **


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Since I had relative ****success on Tumblr recently and you guys are super awesome human beings, here's hoping I go two for two. **

**Disclaimer: Mild references to IM 1 and 2**

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><p>When Tony came to and his head hurt he didn't think much about it, initially.<p>

He knew how to deal with a hangover, and he wasn't a stranger to their disorienting ability to wake him up. He laid in the warm embrace of unconsciousness for a few more moments until the need for a little hair of the dog caused him to pull himself completely from sleep's greedy hands.

When he opened his eyes, he realized it wasn't a hangover. It was a concussion.

A few alarm bells went off through his head as he tried to gather his bearings. This wasn't something that really freaked him out anymore; he _lived _with his team, because apparently the world was always two steps away from complete and utter destruction. With that came not only quite a bit of hangovers but his fair share of concussions.

Tony opened his eyes to something dark and wet, and the warmth that sleep had given him had dissolved into a wet chill. He groaned, wondering why it was so dark and damp when suddenly the world stuttered to a stop around him.

He was in a cave.

Headache forgotten, Tony staggered to his feet with a desperate jerk of limbs. A hot stab of pain bit through his cranium and suddenly his knees were embedded with rock. He bit out a cry that sounded wet.

The alarm bells in his head had intensified. He couldn't shake the sudden swell of panic through his chest, the liquid heat greasing the sides of his stomach, the sudden compression of his brain and his memories. He was sucking air through a straw when he heard it.

"Tony?"

Yinsen looked at him and smiled, shaking a glass bottle full of shrapnel at him. Yinsen shrugged and his eyes shifted away. Was this real? Was he real? He looked pretty visceral, but Tony knew that Yinsen was dead. His breathing quickened with terror.

"Tony?"

There was no air. There was only the pain and the hunger and the…the…

"Tony, hey."

The voice pierced through the haze of his complete Freak Out, and Tony glanced sharply to his side. There was a concrete wall to his left, which confused him. Concrete doesn't exist naturally in caves.

His first thought was torture. As in, like, mental torture. Not entirely comforting. Tony wasn't a big believer of all that psycho-bullshit, but if he spent too much time here it was very likely he would go insane.

(Yinsen, at his side, laughed quietly, giving him a look that clearly said _too late.)_

"Yinsen?" His voice came out in a crack, like ice in the spring.

"No, Tony, it's me. It's Steve." The voice was coming from the other side of the wall. It was Captain America's voice, which seemed to be a good thing. Brute strength, at least, was a good thing.

"Thank _God_. Break this concrete." Tony gasped, fighting away the stammer from his voice. Yinsen crossed the room and put his hand against the smooth wall. Tony wanted to blink him away, but he was afraid of who would replace him. He had many more demons, and he couldn't trust them to stay silent at the moment.

"I—Tony…" A pause, and Tony squinted around his throbbing head. "I can't." Now _that _was Steve's voice.

Tony grunted. "Well, why not?"

"The serum's…" A gasp, muffled, but still there. "Overwhelmed. At the moment."

"Cap?" Fear filtered through Tony's battered senses. This was not good. Not good at all.

"Look, it doesn't matter. Are you ok?"

"Doesn't matter? Christ, Steve, what is _overwhelmed_ supposed to mean?" He ignored the worry in his own voice, because it really didn't make any fucking sense. Maybe he was just worried about himself. Yeah. That's it.

A grunt, more out of annoyance than anything else. "The team's probably on their way. Just forget it."

"You don't have to ask me twice." He replied, grateful for a way out.

"Are you ok?" Steve ignored him, which was pretty much normal for then. While not under the influence of the glowstick of destiny, Steve never sank to Tony's level. Tony said something snarky and he never got the reaction he wanted because Cap just let it roll off his back.

"Oh, so you get to ask me, but I'm not allowed to ask you?" Tony sneered, then added, in a mutter, "That's rich."

"I read your file." Steve's voice was low, caring. It made Tony feel sick.

Tony blinked. He took in a ragged breath. "You can read?"

Yinsen grimaced at him. _Be nice to the man, Tony_. Tony just rolled his eyes and wished that the action didn't hurt so much. "Only every other word." Steve replied, and it took Tony a moment, but he figured out that Steve was joking. (That must be part of the hallucination.)

Tony wasn't in the mood to carry on a conversation. So, instead of replying, he picked himself off the ground once more, and swayed against the nausea. He staggered toward the wall, away from the pressing rock of the cave and put his hand where Yinsen's had been.

He looked down at his hands, and suddenly they were covered in blood. His own or Yinsen's he wasn't sure.

Suddenly, Tony was back on his knees, throwing up yesterday's dinner…and lunch. His esophagus burned with bile. His stomach clenched as he retched and every nerve ending was lit with sweat and clenched pain.

"Tony." Steve's voice was careful, controlled.

But Tony was beginning to come undone already. In his peripheral vision, red fire began to bleed down the jagged walls of the cage. The terror was thick and real and everyone was dying once more and he was not a hugging man but a hug would be nice right about now.

(He had hit his head _really _hard.)

"Tony?!" Steve's voice cracked with strain. "Tony, listen to me." Steve's voice had a determined edge to it that Tony couldn't place. He wouldn't figure it out until long after the moment had passed.

Tony coughed out a thick, wet cough while his ribs trembled beneath his aching skin. Oh God. He glanced down at his hands. The blood was still there, but there was nothing left to throw up. "Yeah?" His voice was ragged and broken, and had Tony been aware of it he might have been embarrassed.

"I need you to keep talking to me." Captain was back and Steve was buried. The authority in his voice covered the previous weakness, and Tony wondered what was happening on the other side of the wall. He didn't wonder for long, because the rocks threaten to collapse over him and Yinsen was about to get crushed, get killed, _again_, and suddenly he was preoccupied. "Tony!" Cap's cuss word was muffled. "I can never get you to shut up, just _talk to me_."

"Why?" Tony asked idly. He was looking at a battlefield of corpses. Blood rivers ran along the rocks. His arc reactor fritzed. He was in the center of a hurricane of grief, a barrage of death and life all woven into one complicated mat of emotions.

"Just do it."

"Don't boss me around. Having a mental crises here." Tony's voice fell flat. "And since when have you cared about what I say?"

There was a dripping sound. There was a pregnant pause. "I don't." Cap's voice had molded from _determined_ to _decision_ and had Tony been coherent he probably would have noticed.

_Woah. Okay then Captain Arrogant. _"You're an ass sometimes, you know that Rogers?"

"Whatever, Stark."

"I bet this was your fault. I don't even remember what happened, but I can guarantee it was you and your stupid self-righteous attitude that landed us here." Tony blinked, and the cave swerved before his eyes, returning back to its regular settings. The blood was gone. The rocks were clean and shining with water. The dark did not cast shadows that turned into bodies. Yinsen, however, was still giving him a knowing look. "This is why I don't follow orders. You're outdated, Cap. You can't fight World War II battles in the 21st century."

"So you're blaming this on me?" Cap's voice rose, like something was funny. "You don't remember much, do you?"

Tony closed his eyes against the pain in his head. Internally, he tried to delve through the pain and darkness and figure out how they'd landed in this hellhole. It took a few moments, but the memories came in grainy, watery images.

_"I'm going in." He'd done a preliminary scan of the building with the HUD; there was no one human in there. The fighting was condensed to the perimeter, trying to save whatever was inside. His team could handle it, so he figured he'd try to figure out what these hired guns had deemed so important as to defend it to the last man._

_ "No you're not." Cap said through the comms."We go in as a team."_

_ "No, _you _go in as a team. I'll go in first."_

_ "Stark, we don't know what's in there." Cap demanded. _

_ "That's the point." Tony responded. Three months with this guy and he still had the audacity to try and tell him what to do. Three months together and he still tried to pretend that they were a team. Still trying to pretend that when he talked, Tony actually listened. _

_ "You are not going in yet."_

_ Tony fired up his thrusters, "Too late. I think I am." He said, gratified by the annoyed grunt coming through his earpiece. _

_ He flew himself into the doors, into the dark hallway and touched down on wooden floors. The building was dark and empty. Somewhat distantly, he registered Cap saying, "Thor, Natasha, close in. I'm going after him."_

_ "Got it." They chorused, and Tony started to move, unwilling to work with Gramps on this one._

_ "Tony!" He heard from the entrance, but he didn't turn. "What exactly do you think you're doing?"_

_ "Saving lives, disarming bombs, being a badass." He lifted a metallic shoulder. "The usual." _

_ "Stop. Stark, I told you, we don't know what dangers are in here." Cap warned, falling into step with Iron Man. Tony was doing another scan through his HUD as Steve was speaking. _

_ "And I told you I wasn't going to play ball with you." Tony shrugged, "So you can just stop trying to be in charge of me."_

_ "This is for your own safety."_

_ "Chill out, Cap." Tony quipped. "Hear you're good at that."_ _In the days and weeks that follow, this statement will carry a sickening irony. Regardless, he let his voice slip downward, going for the low blow just because he could. (And, no, the fact that Tony preferred referencing the Ice as his favorite insult was _not _any sort of symbol of anything. Not at all. Nope.)(Denial is his favorite activity.)_

"_Don't start with me, Stark." Steve took a few steps ahead of Tony, glancing down the long, dark hallway. "Something's not right about this."_

"_Scared, Cap?" Tony taunted and that's when, of course, the HUD began to flash red. Alarms started to go off and shadows shifted and suddenly, very suddenly, it was over_.

And then he woke up here, in this cave.

"I remember you being a dick in that terrorist base." Tony said, and he heard the defensiveness in his voice.

"You're just…" Steve began but his words trailed off into nothingness.

"I'm just what, Cap? Right? I'm always right." Tony opened his eyes. Yinsen was gone.

"You're so full of yourself you can't even see p-past your own nose." Cap stumbled slightly over the words but otherwise retained his grace.

"Please, if we're going to compare arrogance I think we'd know who'd win in that department." Tony slid down against the wall, his feet unable to hold up his body weight. The wall was unpleasantly sticky with cold and wetness. "You are the literal embodiment of arrogance, being Lady Liberty and all."

The silence now was heavier, longer, and Steve finally mumbled out something that sounded like, "Red Skull said s-something like that to me once." (Tony wasn't really sure if Cap said that or not—the words were too garbled. He chose to perceive this as a sign of his massive head injury, rather than a sign that something real and terrible was happening on the other side of that wall.)

A hot stab of anger caused his head to throb anew and Tony huffed out an indignant snort. Silence fell between them for a moment, and bile threatened to rise up from Tony's throat. From this position, Tony could hear better through the drywall. There was more of a wet noise, something that sounded like a squeak, and then silence. "Cap?"

"What?" The voice was sharp, dark, somewhere between furious and spiky. Like an uncovered switchblade, ground out from somewhere deep.

"Ever heard of the term overrated?"

"Only…" A cough, very slight, almost imperceptible. The air was growing colder behind Tony's throbbing head. "Only in articles I read about y-you." His words sounded garbled, like he was chewing a box of gravel, or his mouth was gagged or something. There was a quick gasp and then silence.

"This coming from the twenty-four year old moron." Tony snorted. "Have you actually ever done anything useful in your life?" Tony realized, somewhat distantly, that he was being grossly unfair. But now that he had something to cling to, he was digging his claws in. Though the feeling was brief, for the first time in a long time he felt grounded. Like his rage was the only thing that could keep him from falling into that abyss that had been in the back of his mind since New York.

Blame it on the head injury, blame it on the PTSD, but Tony couldn't stop himself. He was a predator and just a taste of the blood wasn't enough. Would never be enough. The torrent had started, and Tony was going to open it up and suck it dry. "Fury is kidding himself if he thinks some idiot lab boy can keep us all alive, you know that right? You're both fooling yourselves. One of us is going to end up dead, and that's because you can't actually lead this team competently."

"You w-wouldn't know how to lead a t-team if your life depended on it."

"Neither did you." Tony said, and his head began to throb anew, and the pain drove him onward, softened his voice while molding it into something sharper. "You failed them."

This, to this day, is the meanest thing Tony thinks he's ever said.

A week later, this was the only thing he remembered saying.

A week later when Cap was down in the gym at two in the morning, Tony regretted this with everything in his being. A week later, much too late to take the words back, he realized that he used the past tense without meaning to. It was a low blow in the first place, but with that the comment he had transcended the boundaries of _offensive. _He realized that his words had been molded into the single most belligerent, regrettable insult he'd ever said. But now he didn't realize how immensely cruel he was being. Captain America didn't have feelings, (ideals inanimate, unfeeling: _objects_, not people) so Tony was free to continue to berate the man.

"I…I…" Steve sounded weak, dejected. "I saved them."

Tony just rolled his eyes. "That's not what I call salvation, Captain." His words were cold. But they were the truth. Captain America hadn't saved his father. He hadn't saved the rest of the Commandos, who had all met their ends in one way or another over the past seven decades.

Tony Stark was always right. He was a genius, and he spoke the truth. What mattered was that he was speaking honestly, based on his own perceptions. What didn't matter was that Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, wouldn't know redemption until he allowed himself to have it.

And if he couldn't get it? Neither could Steve.

Tony waited for Cap to respond, but there was only the sound of dripping once more. Steve wasn't dishing it back. Steve wasn't holding his own. Steve wasn't standing up to push back and punch harder. (Or at least defending himself.)

"Well?" Tony asked, and he expected the response to be instant.

It wasn't.

Instead, Toy raised his voice. "Cap?" He realized he was sitting in a puddle that hadn't been there earlier.

"Steve?"

And Yinsen blinked at him wearily from the shadows, a look of disappointment on his face.

"_Steve_!"

Yinsen opened his mouth as if to speak but there was only blood, pouring from his chapped lips, staining the ground.

"Answer me, dammit!" His chest was being sawed into and there was fire all around him and he was _all alone_.

Everyone always left him.

Now his demons were all around him, bearing down at him like they had free reign in this personal hell. Obie grinned with glittering eyes and slit Pepper's throat and Yinsen coughed out blood and fucking _Hammer _was clapping like it was the Opera or some shit like that.

He was trapped in this dimension for several long moments.

And then there was a noise that shook the earth underneath him, a rumble of a yell that came from something _big_. The darkness intensified and then lifted. Morning sunlight cut the rocks like knives.

Now the demons took the shape of his mother. "Anthony, honey, let go of me. I have a flight to catch." She was desperate, but still detached. It made every part of him hurt.

_Don't leave me_.

"I'll be back in a few days, Anthony." Mom grunted and pried his hands off her pant leg. "Please, just, Tony…."

His mom trailed off, and time froze for a few moments. They looked at each other eye-to-eye, and Maria hesitated, her eyes softening. It was enough for Tony to know that this was only a hallucination, and he tore himself away from her figure.

In the newly awakened light, there were animated figurines crawling over the rocks. Each rock the light touched vanquished another hallucination, until Tony was almost 62.5% positive that one of his teammates was physically approaching him. "Clint?" There was leftover yearning in his voice.

Now that half the cave was gone, it was easier to focus, to tell what was real. "Yeah, it's me." Clint said in a soothing voice, frowning down at what must have been a pathetic sight. Tony didn't care. He just wanted the pain to go away. As demonstrated, he would cling to anything that allowed him that, however fleeting it was.

"What's…?" His head hurt, and it was hard to remember whether or not all of those things—the fire, Yinsen, the blood—had been real.

"You know where Steve is?"

Tony tossed his head to the side. They had argued… _Since when have you cared about anything I say? _ (I don't.) Yinsen had disappeared

Oh shit.

"The wall…" Tony began, and Clint relayed the info. With a flapping sound and a flash of red, Thor was standing next to Clint. He gouged the hammer into the wall, and Tony tried desperately to remember what he had said to the _man who had just been trying to distract him_. The only reason Steve had started the argument was for Tony's benefit and Tony's benefit alone.

Tony should have known. He should have known because Steve had always known how to press his buttons and where the flaws in his armor were because that was his job. Commanders have to know their soldiers. But he never acted upon that knowledge, never _started _the argument, never made exuberant efforts to continue it. Not until Tony was trapped in a cave with a head injury that Cap couldn't even _see_, he just _knew_. He knew that something was wrong with Tony and took the only road he could to distract Tony from the pain.

And Tony had taken it with a gusto. He had taken the bait and tugged as hard as he could at it. All he knew was that the anger had dulled the pain and the wrath had quelled the fear, and he was Tony Stark, so he was always right, no matter who was hurt in the process.

Thor's hammer split through the drywall another time. In a second the whole thing was crumbling, and with that came the water.

A lot of water.

A lot of freezing water.

Then came Cap.

Clint jumped back and Thor swore, but the torrent of water that came from the newly opened wall rushed over Tony in a wave. He estimated it to be only a few degrees above freezing, judging by the little chunks of ice in it.

When he could breathe again, after he realized his fingers weren't moving because they were already so cold, he saw the blue form of his Captain sprawled on his back a few feet away. (And that blue wasn't from his uniform.)

Tony crawled over to them, toward Clint who was yelling something and Bruce who had shifted back and was now preforming chest compressions, trying to save him. Someone was saying, "He can't go out like this again."

It might have been Tony who shouted it, but he was so goddamned out of it. All he could think about was his clogging throat and the list of people he irrevocably, unconditionally hated growing longer by one name, carving out its way through his already hollowed-out chest. This list was very small, filled only people who had damaged him beyond his breaking point. Damaged him to the extent where he took it personally.

He hated Captain America.

Captain America made him hate himself.

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><p><strong>AN: Writing this makes me really want to do a Steve POV...hmm<strong>

**Anyway, thank you all so much for the reviews/follows/favorites/reads. You are all awesome, wonderful people. You inspire me. :D**

**This chapter, the next one, and the very last one were my absolute favorites to right, so...tell me what you thought? Please and thank you!**

**TO THOSE THAT ALREADY REVIEWED:  
><strong>

**sailorraven34: Thank you! I really liked the helicarrier/quinjet scene in the movie. I initially thought that Tony Stark was a hilarious and that's what made those scenes awesome, but then I realized that he was actually being really, really mean. I didn't really notice it, but now that I've seen the movie a cajillion times its so obvious that he's being humorous, but it's not to laugh _with _Steve, it's to laugh _at _him. Like Capsicle? Funniest nickname ever. But when you actually think about the fact that he's making a crude joke about the ice, it becomes less of a joke and more of an insult. **

**Iron Robin: Let's just not talk about Civil War. I could see it coming from a long way out, and it still hut a LOT when it was confirmed. I don't even know what I'm going to do with myself. STEVE AND TONY ARE BROTP. Anyway, I figure the movie won't come out until 2016, and although there's hints of that tension in Ultron, I can happily pretend that nothing bad will happen until then. **

**Huskygirl1998: Thank you so much! Tony is so much fun to write, and Steve was (initially) my favorite Avenger, so it's really great to hear that when I write them they aren't super OOC. They're both such dynamic characters and it's really great to dive into how they'd react and what they'd think in actual canon. I don't think I'll ever capture them in a way I'll be ****completely satisfied with, but your input is great!**

**debbiejallen: Thank you! My response here will be similar to the one above in regards to the characters, but as for the fact that you couldn't wait for more, made me really very happy. You made my day with that review. **

**Guest: He really is complicated. Can you believe that when I first got into these movies that I absolutely hated Tony Stark? I thought he was an asshole, not a hero. (#ChannelingMyInnerSteve) but now, of course, I love him. All his good qualities are hidden beneath the surface, solely because he's afraid to get hurt again, and that's really sad and beautiful. **

**Guest: Thank you! Even though the internet "ate" (lol) your long review, I'm sure it was wonderful. Either way, long review, short review, no review at all, I still appreciate you. :D**


	5. Chapter 5

"There's another detachment rounding out Fifth Street." Clint's voice was dry in his ear. Tony knew he wasn't exactly happy about being on lookout duty, but the doctor had told him _complete bed rest_ after that last fight, and everyone knew that this was as far as Cap was willing to bend those orders.

"I'm on it." Steve said, from somewhere around Sixth Street. "Stark, once you and Natasha are done there you can join me."

"Roger that."

Tony could hear Steve's sigh and Clint's half-chuckle (literally that joke never gets old) as he blasted through the meaty head of a humanoid intelligent life-form that had decided today would be a good day to destroy San Diego.

With a quick scan, he processed the odds of his fight in his mind, and then fired up his boot thrusters. "You got this, Natasha?"

She grunted and rolled her eyes, spy-code for _Who do you think I am?_ The situation she was dealing with was obviously in good hands, so he took to the air, jetting toward Cap's location.

"What do we got?" Tony rounded a corner.

"There's a lot of them." Was all Cap said, and Tony winced.

"You think we can handle them?"

"Do we have a choice?" Another clipped sentence, a grunt through the communication link and Tony was touching down in the middle of the fray.

Ok, so maybe things weren't the greatest with them.

(And maybe that's a severe understatement.)

Maybe it was the past few months had led Tony to realize that there were certain things that he needed to do to get over himself, to get rid of his stupid grudge. Tony, however, literally could not think of a way to bring up what they needed to talk about.

Maybe it was the fact that Tony knew that discussion would lead to others things. Things that would leave him raw. He didn't want that.

Or maybe it was just his childish need to keep white-knuckling this feeling. He'd been holding on to it for so long, he didn't know what letting go would feel like. He had a sickening sense that if he figured out why he hated Captain America, and did indeed let go, he'd be falling again.

So the whole ignoring-Steve-on-a-regular-basis probably wasn't his brightest idea, (especially after _everything_) but he couldn't do what needed to be done.

He wasn't even sure if he _wanted _to yet, anyway. Tony was never one for the apology. On top of it all, something deeper than the fear was still holding him back from trying to take the high road and repair a relationship that was dangerously on the edge of exploding. It was still a little about his father and the past, he supposed, but in the ten months they had known one another, their problems had grown into something more complicated, into something about heroes and villains and respect.

This was all, of course, Tony's own doing. However, he refused to see it as such, and remained obstinate. He had disobeyed that order because the team hadn't needed to all go together into that terrorist cell. He'd berated Cap inside that cave because Steve had brought that on himself. He remained determined that everything that went wrong was all Cap's fault, and that obsession clouded his moral judgment.

So they weathered on, stormy and quiet as always, their relationship about as friendly as Hurricane Katrina. It reminded him of another relationship, and that thought always made his mouth run dry and his arc reactor press against its walls.

He had never wanted this.

(Whatever.)

Steve wasn't wrong—there were a lot of aliens. A ripple of fear trickled down Tony's spine. With Bruce under a rock again after the whole cave-debacle (turns out it had something to do with Ross) and Thor back in Asgard for some holiday, there were only technically three of the Avengers on the ground at the moment. SHIELD forces were focused on clearing the citizens, but an air strike had an ETA of fifteen minutes, so they'd have to hold out until them.

The fear disappeared with the first flex of his fist, however, and Tony was fighting once more.

It was a little like a dance, though much more violent. He'd skid to the side to take out a few of them and fire up his boots to pop up on their other side. A few of them dropped like that until they wised up and expected him to fly over their dumbfounded heads. He started working with his repulsors only, twisting his arms and extending the white-blue beam of light until the carcasses were charred and smoking. His favorite offense, however, involved Steve's shield, where he'd pull his repulsors at full power and let the beam direct off the vibranium and then they'd all be decimated. At the moment, however, Cap was a little too overwhelmed for the move, with aliens scrambling over one another to claw up his back and around his legs. He spun a few times, taking a few out like his shield was a bowling ball, and backed out, gathering his bearings, and attacked once more.

Tony refocused and pressed himself harder. The aliens were little, small lumps of discombobulated, discolored flesh, but they were feisty little things. They darted around at his feet and snarled with deceptively sharp teeth. Cap already had a few bite marks oozing blood. Some of them carried weapons that looked like child's play, but they discharged electrical charges that would stop a super soldier's heart or short an entire Iron Man suit. (So he stayed clear of those.)

The fight continued, and Tony could feel sweat forming in the crease of his elbows and where his forehead met the faceplate. It was a hot summer morning; the California breeze drifted lazily from the Pacific Ocean, coloring the air with brine and sea.

Tony coughed, and with one last resounding punch, they had defeated the aliens. He was about to call to Natasha through his communications link to try and get down to the bottom of where their mothership was, why they had attacked, and call off the air strike, when he noticed motion from the corner of his eye.

He turned with a mechanized whine to see Cap extend his elbow and throw his shield. Right at him.

It wasn't a very nice thing to do, so Tony did the one thing he could in return.

Tony punched the living shit out of him.

(It wasn't very well thought out.)

He darted out of the way of the shield, and running on adrenaline and sweat, cocked his arm back and hit Cap with one closed metal fist. Steve was sent reeling, his hand cupping his jaw, the other one falling with a smack on the nearby brick wall. His shield, meant to be caught, hit him in the stomach as it returned, and Steve absorbed the momentum with his abdomen. He hunched over with a muted gasp.

"What the hell?" Tony asked angrily, the edges of his voice hard. Cap used his shield as a weapon against the enemy, and it was far from appropriate that he would try to take off Tony's head with it.

Steve, struggling to breathe, his shoulders set, his eyes blue steel, rolled his tongue in his mouth before responding. "Dammit, Stark." he breathed, his voice choppy and his breath ragged. He rolled his neck to the side and spat out blood.

"What in God's name did you do that for?" Tony pressed on. Steve still didn't look at him. "Hey, Frat Boy, what the fuck is your problem?" With his own words, he felt something coming. Like a storm brewing over the ocean, dark and angry and electrical.

"My problem?" Cap's words were bleak and black and borderline sociopathic. With one hand, Cap wiped blood from his lip and with the other he grappled against the wall. He rolled fully to the pads of his feet and straightened up.

Tony knew he had done something terribly, terribly wrong.

Steve Rogers was not standing in front of him. Captain America was, bearing down on him an anger Tony had never seen before, and _damn_, it was intimidating.

"Cap?" His voice was much quieter than before.

"_I'm,_" Steve began his jaw already purpling. "_done_." His voice was gravel.

"What?"

He took another deep breath in, his anger flushing the bits of exposed skin on his face, clouding his eyes with gray. "I'm done." He repeated. "With you."

"So you're finally breaking up with me?" The quip came unnaturally to Tony, but he made an attempt to deliver it with his usual witty ease. He could already sense that he was going to walk away hurt. Might as well take them both down in the process.

"I didn't _choose _this, Stark. I didn't expect to walk away from that crash and wake up into a world that wasn't my own." (Where was this even coming from?) "And I don't know what problem you have with me, but I'm done."

"You threw your shield at _me_—" Tony began, but Steve cut him off.

"You don't want to follow my orders, you challenge every decision I make… I helpyou, and you insult me. I'm sorry I knew your father and I'm sorryI'm not the man you expected to me and I am _so_ _damned sorry_ I was put in charge of this team." Natasha was at the mouth of the street now, slowly approaching the two men. The comm. link was still working so Clint could hear every word. "I can't control any of that."

"I'd follow your orders if they weren't so obsolete." Tony insisted. Regret, fickle and musty, tickled him. Though he didn't remember much of what he said in that cave, he knew that he undermined his Captain's leadership. And if Steve's almost-imperceptible wince now told Tony anything, it was that Tony had said something similar before.

"Yeah? You and that fancy suit know everything?" Steve's voice held a hint of dark amusement that made Tony feel uncomfortable. He usually wasn't the one to miss the joke.

Steve slid one hand underneath his cowl and shucked it over his head, disturbing usually pristine blonde hair. His eyes were blue fire, his face a purpled, mottled red. He let the silence fall between them and then crossed the street. Tony took a few steps back, afraid that he was about to get beat up, but Steve instead ducked around him.

Tony followed him with his eyes and the breath flooded out of his lungs.

Behind him lay the shell of an alien. In its hands, a weapon was glowing a fiery orange, signaling that it was ready to discharge a shock. On its neck was a curved mark that could have only been the work of Steve's shield.

"Your tech pick up this guy?" Steve pressed, and then a smug look passed through his features that Tony was just _dying _to wash off. "That's what I thought." Steve said, picking up the weapon. With a few clicks he disassembled it and tossed the broken thing next to its dead owner. "I wasn't aiming at you." His voice spun a dark web through the atmosphere. "I never was."

Tony glanced down the street, to where Natasha was standing a cool distance away. Her arms were crossed, and upon meeting eyes with him, she slowly shook her head. He'd finally screwed up bad enough and things were about to break.

"How did you expect me to know that?" Tony countered, but he already knew he sounded like some sort of grumpy teenager.

"But you're Tony Stark. Aren't you always right?" Steve laughed, once, without mirth. The words sparked a memory, something from the cave, and Tony grew cold. "No, I just expected you to trust me, Tony. And obviously you never will. You and me? We're not a team. We never will be."

Tony ground to a halt.

He was ready for this moment. He felt like he'd always been ready for this moment. "Oh for fuck's sake, Steve, stop with the melodrama." His words were building in momentum. And Tony couldn't stop himself—he never could. The words forced themselves out, biting and as harsh as they were. His chest clenched and his words intensified and something inside him just _fucking snapped_. "You want to bitch about us not living up to your precious, heroic Commandos? Take it somewhere else. We don't _care_! We don't want you here, Steve!" _I__ don't want you here_. "Everyone that cares is dead." He looked up with red tinged vision and a heaving chest and…

There it was.

Finally.

A reaction.

Tony had miscalculated how angry Steve really was.

Blue eyes molded from angry to _pissed _and Steve took an easy, determined step forward. Suddenly Tony wasn't Iron Man, superhero extraordinaire; suddenly Stark was Iron Man, supervillain, about to be taken out by Captain America, super soldier.

Steve had never been this angry, not at him. Tony thought that he had wanted a reaction. He thought that after all this time, if Cap would just respond, say something just as rude right back, then his hatred would be justified. But Cap had never been affected by any of the ice jokes or the technology jokes. And Tony had just assumed that the man really was some kind of fucking angel.

He knew now that Steve was no angel.

And cruel words build. And build.

And build.

But Tony wasn't one to back down now, and he figured it was going to happen anyway, so he threw the first punch.

(Again, it wasn't very well thought out.)

Tony had never actually tested his own skills against an unequivocally angry Steve Rogers, so he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised when Cap caught his wrist.

They were caught in a half second stalemate, in which Tony actually thought their strengths were evenly matched. But then something popped. Tony glanced down with alarm and saw the metal had crumpled around his wrist, whining against the force of two of Steve's fingers and a thumb wrapped easily around a gauntlet. He watched for a moment as the metal condensed and crushed as the pressure on his wrist began to painfully intensify. When he raised alarmed brown eyes to Steve's face, Steve's grip tightened and then suddenly there was no ground beneath his feet.

Iron Man was flung backwards, air whooshing around his suit, propelled backwards by terrifying, unmitigated strength. He hit the wall and his eyes went black with impact, his whole body crashing into brick with just enough momentum not to break the wall.

"Hey! _Guys_!"

Dazed, Tony was going to slide to the ground, when Cap caught his throat. He didn't squeeze, just kept him standing, pressed against the wall.

"You wanna say that again?" Steve's voice was gritty, tinged with a Brooklyn accent that only came out when he was injured. Cap was all bravado and muscle, but Tony could see that, while Captain America fought his bully, deep down, Steve Rogers was weeping.

Tony closed his eyes, because something about that fact hurt, more than his head, more than his wrist.

"Tony! Steve! Stop it!"

He grunted. "Let's talk about trust, Cap." Tony replied, trying to shove the pain away. He knew he'd do a better job if he had three fingers worth of scotch in his hand, but he'd have to make due.

Tony worked one crushed gauntlet up and the other around and managed to shove Steve away, causing him to stumble back slightly. Both of them regained balance, sizing one another up.

"Guys…" Natasha warned once more. The tension in the air was thicker than one of Thor's electric storms. The team, of course, was used to this. Usually they let it play out until it faded away, but this was a little more violent than usual.

They ignored her caution. They both saw her taking steps forward, to get in between them should it come to blows again, but it was as if she wasn't even there. Tony took a step forward, and Cap's eyes darted, almost unwillingly, toward his shield. "You're right. I don't trust you. It's like respect, Cap." Tony took another step and Cap stood his ground. "It has to be earned." They were mere feet from one another, and the tension was less than moments away from snapping again. He could feel it, prickling along his skin, overpowering anything else within him. This was so much easier. The fighting was so much easier and the relief was always immediate, quick and satisfying, when he saw just how badly he could wound his teammate. Sure, Cap could wound him right back, but the immediate satisfaction of his own words would cover that pain until long after the fact.

The situation had gotten way too far out of hand, and the only thing left to do was finish it.

"And you?" Tony shook his head. "You don't trust me either."

From this close, Steve's eyes reminded Tony of frozen steel. Hardened and cold. However, like said overworked metal, Tony knew they were brittle at molecular level, granular, unnoticeable to the naked eye. "You haven't given me a reason to." Steve's response was quick and succinct, lackluster.

"Well, neither have…" Tony's words got softer. He remembered a strong hand picking him up from the New York Battlefield. He remembered cold water and flat line. "…you."

Tony watched Steve. They were both breathing heavily, staring at each other, perhaps searching for something, and then abruptly Steve shook his head and backed away.

And just like that, the storm was over.

The anger had fizzled out of Cap's face, and a certain air of coolness had replaced it. It was the face of a man who had made a decision. The tension was still there but it had changed, cooled and hardened so that Tony was afraid to look at.

Tony didn't know which one was scarier, the angry Captain America or the calm one.

"I've tried." Tony remembered being talked off a ledge on a dark, drunk night. He remembered a panic attack in the few moments before dawn out on Stark Tower's newly refurbished balcony, wondering why it was even worth it, when someone put a cup of coffee next to his elbow and a newspaper with the headline MIAMI SAVED—AVENGERS TO RECEIVE KEY TO THE CITY. He remembered someone waking him up on the Quinjet and a whispered _you were having a nightmare_. He remembered the quiet presence at the door to his lab when he'd trashed it after that mission when they'd lost ten of their own. "I've tried, Tony. And I'm done trying. I can't do this anymore."

Goose bumps pricked his skin, and Tony realized what he had done.

He was his father.

Just a drunk bastard.

"You mean—?" He asked, numb. He made the decision that the calm Cap was scarier. Infinitely so. This, this right here, was fear.

"You so very obviously think that I'm not qualified to lead this team." Steve turned, his tone neutral, his words matter-of-fact. There was fuzz on the comm. link; however, signaling that even Clint knew what was coming here. "I'll never be enough." Steve slipped his cowl back over his head. "Obviously, you could do a better job." Steve gestured around to both Natasha and the felled aliens.

"Cap—"

"No. You've made it more than clear." His voice was really, really sharp, which led Tony to believe that the anger wasn't gone, just buried. Steve turned away and sought his shield. With a sharp click of his foot, he flipped it back into his hands. "I was a five-foot-nothing asthmatic, Tony. I know where I'm not needed."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I meant to post this on Friday, but then a wild social life appeared! Better late than never, though. This is the last part of "The five things that made Tony Stark hate Captain America" but fortunately (or unfortunately, however you want to see it) the "one time that made him change his mind" was so long that I'll be posting it in three parts. However, with a break next week and my infinite love for readers, I'll post the parts within three days of one another. <strong>

**Anyway, thank you so much for all your kind reviews and reads and favorites and follows. I enjoyed writing this chapter even more than the previous one, and reviews are always appreciated. THANK YOU!**

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE ALREADY REVIEWED:**

**ErinKenobi2893: Thanks bundles for ALL of your reviews! They were very nice and I appreciated them :D**

**Huskygirl1998: Haha, glad that you've picked up on that. It's supposed to be subtle, but especially in this chapter and the last one, Tony's indecision when it comes to his feelings toward Cap are slowly becoming more evident. Never fear though, it's not over yet. I think "it gets worse before it gets better" applies here, for this chapter and the coming ones...**

**thatfitgeek: I initially didn't like Tony either. It took me a very, very long while to see that he, as a character, was more than meets the eye. He still bothers me sometimes, even now, but I guess he's just a very difficult guy.**

**sailorraven34: I KNOW I WANT TO DO A STEVE POV. But I agree. I think if I take this and convert it into a Steve POV piece it will lose the underlying meaning that I've been getting at (and will become more evident in the next part.) I think I'm going to do another Steve and Tony five plus one stories from Steve's POV, but it'll be different. I don't have many ideas yet... hmm...**

**Iron Robin: Oh no! You were confused? The gist of it was that he was seeing a hallucination of Yinsen and it made his panic escalate when he focused too hard on it. That's why Cap tried to distract him, and that's why when he wasn't distracted everything just got worse. If that didn't explain it well enough, please feel free to PM me if you want. **

**Stevenbucky1234: Civil War is not a thing. What are you talking about? Civil War doesn't exist. Nope. Not at all. (Yes I'm in denial, and yes that means Civil War will not be anywhere close to this fic)**

**Qweb: Thank you! And as I told sailorraven34, I think I'm definitly going to do a similar fic with Steve POV, but it won't be the same exact scenes. Of course, it'll be a lot of angst and eventual friendship and the two of them being stupid toward one another, but it'll be different than this one. It'll be like this fic's twin, if that makes any sense. **


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: *Heath Ledger's Joker voice* and here we _go_**

* * *

><p>It all came back to him in a series of flashbacks.<p>

He was still unconscious, but underneath closed eyelids, he was beginning to regain a semblance of cognitive thought. He could hear the beeping of machines through the muggy darkness, and he could tell that he was in some sort of hospital room, but he couldn't physically get himself to wake up.

There was something sitting on his eyes and his chest, forcing him to stare at the pitiless blackness and recall the memories.

It started out in the morning. Autumn had hit the city in full swing, and Tony was, of course, in his lab. He was looking for something, but the lab was a mess. Determined, he flipped his fingers through crumpled sheets of blueprints and old scraps of paper full of calculations. It wasn't on that bench. He moved to the next one, this one full of older stuff. An empty box of pizza that smelled like old pepperoni. A crushed gauntlet. The tool that he was looking for. A SHIELD memo from two weeks ago.

His hands stilled, and then skimmed back over the table and the pads of his finger traced the crushed gauntlet.

He winced, trying to suppress the memories of that horrible meeting with Fury, in which Tony and Steve had sat side-by-side in the center of a table surrounded by the other Avengers. Fury had glared at him with one eye and said "I think the team needs a little break." Steve had uncrossed his arms and reached for the mission file, not even sparing Tony a sideways glance.

After that, they had been dismissed, and when Tony landed back at Stark tower with a concussion and another hole in his chest, he had immediately started for the lab.

"Tony—?" Pepper had started, but his mind was only on one track, his thoughts on a constant loop. JARVIS was picking up parts of his suit off him as he went, but most of his energy was focused on his right wrist, on the part that wouldn't come off.

"Tony, what's going on?" The click of her heels followed him, but he needed to get it off, he _had _to get it off, he was about to _get it off_.

He reached his lab with only one remaining part of his suit on him, mangled around his wrist.

"Tony?" Pepper stilled behind him, and her voice was heavy with warm concern.

He turned around. He faced her.

"It won't come _off_." His voice broke.

And no matter how hard he tugged and pried and ripped at the metal, the crushed gauntlet was not going to come off without being cracked apart.

Pepper had crossed the room and stilled his hand, looking at him with kind eyes. Her fingers deftly threaded through his shaking hands. "What happened?" She asked, her eyes ghosting down the finger imprints in the metal.

"It's just-it's not—it's stuck and I can't get it off…I…"

"Tony," She shushed, carding a few fingers through his hair. He leaned into her. Still looking at him with that concerned expression, she raised her voice. "JARVIS…?"

"No!" he jumped, and pulled away. There was the fear again, deep, dark, tumultuous fear, threatening to come to the surface. Desperate, panicked fear. _Anthony_, his father said, _don't._ "JARVIS, don't you dare bring that laser out. I've got it. It'll come off."

But it didn't.

The next morning Cap's floor in the tower was empty. The only thing left was a few drawers full of clothes he wouldn't need and an old leather jacket hanging, forlorn in the closet. Steve was off on his own, somewhere in Europe on a surveillance mission that would last several months.

And it was really all Tony's fault. He had shut everything out, denied everything that was inside him for so long, and he hadn't even calculated what the fallout would be. Captain America _was _his childhood, and the repercussions of that had caused him to make some irrational moves.

Now, he looked at the gauntlet. He had to crack it in half in order to get his wrist out. And when he looked down at the throbbing limb, he had found the nasty, splotchy bruise to be a dark red color. Parts of it were already turning into a deep purple.

His fingers dropped from the useless hunk of metal on the table and touched his wrist. Kneading the skin there, he found that it didn't hurt anymore. The only thing left was a yellow tint of skin, showing that there had once been a bruise there.

Suddenly, his lab was suffocating. He'd spent seventy-two hours in it already, and he couldn't look at any more schematics or spend another moment inside his own head.

So he left.

Tony hardly even realized it when he stepped onto the street. Cars honked and the breeze stirred up and he dug his hands deeper into the leather pockets of his jacket. Tony needed something to drink, and he figured that eight o'clock wasn't really the best time to buy a shot, so he settled on hunting down a good cup of coffee instead.

He walked, not really paying attention to where he was going, no real destination in mind. He was too busy trying not to hate what he had done and who he'd become. And all this time Tony thought that _Cap _was more like his father, when in reality, Cap was right when he said that Tony couldn't see past his own nose. He hadn't seen that all his childhood efforts to be like his father had paid off in a way he'd never wanted them to. He hadn't been able to see that in trying to suppress the memories that he had stirred them up and made them worse.

It was all just so very, very complicated, and so Tony chose not to think about it. He chose not to feel fifteen years old again and trying to measure himself up to a man who had already broken the ruler. He chose not to feel eight years old again and wish that he could ask Captain America what made them different, what made Howard love Cap when Howard couldn't love his own son.

It all came down to the same idea.

Tony just didn't deserve it.

He supposed he knew that for a while now. He'd just taken this hurt and turned it into hate. It was so much easier that way. The poison was directed at Steve, but it was only there in the first place because Tony was toxic.

In all this self-denial and self-deprecation, he found himself at a Starbucks. It was busy, for it being this early on a Saturday morning, but he was content to stand in the line and continue to brood.

He had finally gotten to the bottom of it, of why he hated a man who so clearly shouldn't have been hated. It was all his father's doing. It was the fact that Tony would never be good enough, that Tony would never be the right kind of hero with Cap around. It was the fact that _Tony was not Captain America_, really. That's what Howard had always wanted, in the end. Howard had looked for Cap, but in the end all he was left with was an angsty teenager giving him shit at the bow of the boat.

It was funny, this knowledge.

Usually proving a hypothesis right made him feel good about himself.

He reached the front of the line, and ordered with a roll of his eyes.

("Hey, aren't you Tony—" The cashier began, but he really didn't need to have a fan moment right now so he just reminded her impolitely that he wanted his coffee black.)

He scooped the coffee up and hit the streets once more.

He was so distracted he didn't realize he was being followed.

In fact, he didn't even realize it until he found himself in Central Park, throwing back the last dredges of his coffee. (Which he didn't even like, Starbucks was overrated in his mind). The occasional runner jogged past him, but other than that, he had reached a fairly secluded part of the park.

He tossed the foam cup into a nearby trash can, feeling the fading warmth of the coffee in his esophagus as the wind picked up once more.

He should probably call Pepper. God, that woman was his salvation. And she was worried about him. She was in Paris for the week, though, trying to secure spending in the French subsidiary of SI, and wouldn't be home for a few days. She'd probably be relieved to hear that he was out in of the lab.

"Excuse me?" He heard from behind him. He was almost at the edge of the park, now. He could see the street in front of him, bustling with people that weren't paying attention.

Tony jerked around, trying to wipe the sleeplessness out of his face. "Yeah?" His voice came out gruff.

She took a few steps forward innocently, wiping blonde hair off her shoulder with a timid smile. "Are you…are you Iron Man?" She lowered her voice into an endearing whisper like she was ten years old. In reality, she looked like a college co-ed from Columbia, probably in her early twenties.

Tony half-smiled. "I am Iron Man." (He never got tired of saying that. It was the one thing, other than Pepper, he had to be proud of.) Absently, his fingers drifted over his right wrist.

She smiled gleefully, and Tony was momentarily gratified. Here was a physical embodiment of the fact that he had made a difference. His self-pity lifted for a moment. "Good." She said.

It didn't hit him until the blackness took his vision that the word that left her mouth had an edge of hardness, an underlying smirk. It was not innocent.

It didn't matter, in the end. Because by the time he realized that she wasn't an adoring fan, the world was completely black.

* * *

><p>Tony Stark was really <em>fucking done<em> with waking up in strange places. Right now, on the precipice of waking in a hospital, he knew it wouldn't be too bad, because at least this was a friendly environment. This time he'd have the beeping of machines and the warm, doting voices of doctors to keep him company. At least it was better than waking up in a cave.

Or tied to a chair.

Which is exactly what had happened earlier. With a nauseous groan of "What the hell—" Tony had flicked his eyes open to a darkened room. He had no idea how he'd gotten there or how that stupid co-ed had dragged an unconscious Tony Stark out of Central park unnoticed.

He jerked his wrists to find they were bound to the chair he was in, and a similar action told him his ankles were in the same situation.

Well damn.

"Morning, Tony." That same chick said, slick and easy. She was perched against a small table across the room, her face a dangerous smirk. There was a man in the corner, a quiet, dark force that he didn't recognize. His skin was painted dark by the shadows, his eyes black, lifeless orbs.

Tony blinked away the blurriness and tried to focus on something other than his dry mouth. As the world shifted into focus, he saw the girl walk close to him. She leaned forward. "You really shouldn't be out alone, Mr. Stark." She paused. "Haven't you ever heard of the buddy system?"

_Yeah, I'm not really a people-person_, Tony thought dryly.

He jerked his head toward the woman's torso. She was wearing tight jeans and a carefully low-cut V-neck shirt (that ironically had an Avengers logo on it.) "I'm just curious," Tony grunted, his eyes painting down the ridiculous amount of cleavage that shirt was spilling out. "Are those implants?" He inwardly smiled at his own joke, but she didn't find it as funny.

So she slapped him. Open-palmed, as hard as she could. If anything, it was an effective way to wake him up. With his neck now at an odd angle, he gasped. "I'm assuming that's a 'yes'"

"Shut up." The woman demanded, taking a few steps back.

"Not really my style."

She smirked at him, and Tony tried to discreetly look around and figure out where the hell he was. The room was nondescript. He could have been anywhere. Some run of the mill apartment in Queens. An old, run-down house all the way up in Albany. God, he might not even be in the state of New York anymore. Judging by the smell, this place could have very well been in New Jersey. He shuddered.

"So what's this all about?" He lowered his voice. "Usually you have to buy me dinner first."

She clenched her fingers, and Tony was glad at his knack for annoying people. It came in handy, every once in a while. (It also destroyed a lot, but that was something he should probably worry about later.)

"Anthony Stark." She began, but Tony cut in. "That's my name." (He fought the urge to say "don't wear it out" like he was ten years old)

"We've been waiting for you."

"Who is 'we'?" He fought to keep himself under control. This was obviously not a good situation to be in. Everything about this screamed _wrong, wrong, wrong_.

"I think you know."

"You know, despite how smart I am, I haven't quite mastered mind-reading yet…" He tried at humor, but was cut off by her hand at his cheek again, sending a sharp sting of pain to his head and into his muscle.

"For a genius, Anthony, you aren't very smart." He fought away the lump in his throat. "You haven't made the connections yet?"

He sighed. "I still don't read minds, lady. You're gonna have to be a bit more clear."

"It's not really that difficult." She shrugged. "There aren't many of us left, but we do like out retribution." Oh no. Here comes the monologue. "The cave was sick irony, especially for us, but we never thought it would end quite so beautifully. And then everything clicked."

"What are you _talking _about?"

"Let me be clear, Anthony. You can take down something, but you can never fully get rid of it." She shrugged, as if her next words weren't about to bring his whole world crashing down. "You brought down Stane. You brought down Raza. You didn't bring down _us_."

"I don't—"

"You think you got rid of all of us? Tony, the Ten Rings are so much more than Raza. We're so much more than terrorists. Can't you see? We're an ideal, Mr. Stark. We're an entity." His heart plummeted, in a free fall toward his toes. No gravity, no ground, just the fall. "We might be smaller now, but you won't ever defeat all of us." His breathing quickened. "We gave you your start, Anthony." Tony didn't know why she added that particular sentence, but it hit him like a kick in the stomach. "We're here to take it away."

No.

This was not happening. He hadn't seen it coming. The cave thing had something to with Ross, not Raza. They both began with "R" sure, but it was _Ross _not _Raza. _It didn't matter that it had always struck him as really odd that some random militant group had a cave-structure just lying around to throw him in. It didn't matter that he never did draw the connections as to how _Ross _would have known about Tony's problems, rather than Bruce's. After the cave debacle, SHIELD had picked up intel that it was Ross. It was that simple. Not the Ten Rings. Ross.

This was ridiculous. It also was not happening. Not happening. (Denial was _still _his favorite activity.) The Ten Rings were gone. He'd made sure of that.

(Something inside him told him that he'd only made sure _Raza _was gone.) (That same something also called him an idiot for believing the cave thing was ever Ross.)

Tony refused to feel the fear. "What are you gonna do?" He asked, his voice full of malice and confidence. He hoped his team, or what was left of it, had noticed he was missing. "Rip out my arc reactor? Take away my suits?" He swallowed. "Do it. I dare you. See where that gets you."

"You misunderstand." She moved away from him, walking back toward the table across the room. He noticed the man once more, stony and silent. Chills took his spine. "Iron Man is a symbol of all of Raza's shortcomings, not our own." The Avengers were probably on their way already. "We aren't ending Iron Man. We're just ending the parts of Tony Stark that make him Iron Man."

He was confused, utterly so. What the hell did that even mean?

She smiled, and withdrew a syringe full of a murky gray liquid that Tony didn't like. He wasn't sure what it was, but it didn't exactly look like liquid sunshine. "We already did the test runs." Her face twisted, her eyes darkening. "You're the final trial."

He swallowed around a dry mouth. His fingers tightened against the chair. _Any time now, guys_.

"A mutual friend of ours had it right, you know." She flicked at the needle, squinting at the liquid. Tony squirmed a little. _Ok, I'm ready when you are. Let's get this whole rescue show on the road, guys. _

"Yeah?" His voice faltered a little. He hated being at the disadvantage.

She flicked up a shoulder and her fingers trailed over the skin at his neck. Her touch sprouted goose bumps. "How will your team fight us?" She asked, and then the tip of the needle pierced his skin and he was tasting fire. "When they're too busy fighting you?"

* * *

><p>He was out of it for three straight days.<p>

Well, not really out of it. He was always semi-conscious, semi-there, but he couldn't move or fight or _breathe_.

All he could do was burn.

Whatever poison they'd injected him with was like acid through his veins, something deep and wet and hot. It stirred up his stomach and pushed bile out of his lips and made his brain swell against the backs of his eyes. His skin was on fire with a fever, his nose dripped blood on and off. His tongue was heavy in his mouth, and his lungs chafed against one another.

The room swayed in front of him, blurring and darkening only to disappear. He kept seeing things, animals, memories, people, even some things so fantastical he knew, even through the delirium, they weren't real.

He was falling through the void, and he couldn't "lose his stomach contents around the ten thousandth mile" because there was nothing left to vomit up but his own blood.

The pain hit him in waves, dragging him under the musty sea of blackness, and then subsequently pushing him back up and breaking the surface. It drove him toward desperately crying out for the shadowy figures that lingered near his vision but never really became anything more than silhouettes.

He jerked, jerked, _jerked_ at the bounds at his wrists, hoping to hear the snap of bones or feel the potent sting of bloodied rope or the pain of bruises. His hands trembled and his muscles stiffened, but he could not break the bonds.

_Please, someone help me_.

No one came.

He understood what was happening, of course. (Though it was, perhaps, too late for it to matter.)

She'd told him that they were ending the parts of him that made him Iron Man, and he hadn't understood. But the parts that made him Iron Man were the only parts he respected about himself.

They were taking away the hero.

And it would leave only the man.

They were taking the hero and squeezing and pulling and prodding until everything that made him a hero was dulled, and everything else inside him was ready to be unleashed. Until his own pain was made manifest and drove him toward becoming the shell that he was on the inside. They were taking the things that he usually kept suppressed and manipulating them until he _became_ them.

He was alone and there was only an anger brewing underneath the pain that he couldn't push down. It was Hulk-sized, something that started in his stomach and very slowly spread throughout his body. It was hotter than the poison, more deadly than the pressure in his head. It was feral and it was taking over.

Somewhere in between the vomiting and the pleading and the pain, he wondered why he had always felt sorry for himself. He wondered where all this self-pity had come from and wondered how he had let his heart get this damaged in the first place.

On the third day when he woke up, the pain was gone.

All of it.

So were the ropes around his wrists and ankles. He peeled himself away from the chair, standing easily. His shirt stuck to him with sweat and something red stained the collar. His nose had been bleeding. He didn't feel it. His world was only white nose and red anger and his brain was effectively shut off by the fever.

He took in a deep breath, flinching when air hit his charred lungs, and stepped away from the chair. Every part of his body, inside and out, was sore. He didn't mind.

He stretched out worn limbs and ghosted fingers over his bruised wrists, and smiled, just a little, to find them purpled where he'd pulled at the ropes.

His hands paused at his right wrist.

The smile widened.

Across the room, on a table, sat a few of his personal belongings. A cell-phone, cracked and broken so that it couldn't be tracked. A wallet, unharmed, untampered with. A small metallic bracelet that would connect him to his suit.

Good.

He clicked it on and pressed a button.

And then he waited.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: OK, I have a legit question for you all people. Are my Author's Notes too long or too much? I feel like I can blabber on forever down here in my own little mind, but if its too much or distracts from the fic don't be afraid to tell me to shut the heck up ;)<strong>

**That being said, I actually don't have much more to say on this chapter...other than watch out. The next one is kinda heavy. **

**Ta ta! Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans, and happy November to those that aren't!**

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE REVIEWED:**

**ErinKenobi2893: Haha Creds for that _Star Wars _reference! And I agree with you. I don't think Tony really understands to what extent he's hurting Steve. He knows he's not being very nice, but he's doing it not because he _wants _to be mean, but because it comes from a place that's really deep and dark and painful for him. And Steve likes to pretend he's a robot, so that doesn't help things there.**

**Huskygirl1998 : I know! I prefer Steve Rogers as a kind polite wonderful man who is a BAMF on the side, rather than a perpetually awkward, blushing guy. (Although he is that, to an extent.) Anyway, I just like a balance between that. And as to the last line, the last line didn't really come from the bottle comment but I've (obviously) been assessing the things that Tony said during the movie and asking myself _why _he said that particular thing, and what his intent was in saying them. I think the whole bottle commentary was definitely an influence on the previous chapter, but it was especially inspiring in the chapter that took place during the actual movie. **

**thatfitgeek: thaank you! There are a lot of things Tony doesn't understand, but he'll figure them all out sooner or later (wink wink nudge nudge). And yes, fear. Tony doesn't understand that fear. But it's very deep rooted. He doesn't like to lose the people he loves. (Even if he doesn't know that he loves that person.)**

**Qweb: Thanks! I've already started on the first chapter, so I'm thinking of posting it ASAP. Anyway, thank you so much!**

**Iron Robin: Awww that review touched my heart. I occasionally get really good reviews that I like to revisit to improve my day and that, my friend,was one of them 3. THANK YOU SO MUCH**

**sailorraven34: It makes me sad when they fight, too. They're whole dynamic makes me sad sometimes. I don't know why I want them to be friends so badly. In movie canon, they're nothing (so far) for us to even consider them to be friends. But idk. I JUST WANT A WHOLE AVENGERS MOVIE WITH ALL OF THEM BEING BROS AND HAVING SLEEPOVERS AND STEVE SKETCHING IN TONY'S LAB OR AND THE TEAM PLAYING TRUTH OR DARE AND IS THAT REALLY TOO MUCH TO ASK?! ok, rant over. Thanks for the review. :D**


	7. Chapter 7

Tony killed his repulsors as he landed with a metallic clank on the balcony of his own tower. The sun had set a few minutes ago, bathing the city in shadows. The western sky was a mix of pinks and yellows and a few hints of darkening indigo. Down far below, the streetlights were on and the night life was beginning to pick up. Headlights danced through the shadows of buildings as the descending sun threw its bloodied colors through the city.

He looked down at the city below and then across the spanning architecture of his own building. This was all a big joke.

Tony Stark liked jokes.

His delirious brain pushed him forward, across the stone balcony. He opened the door quietly, not very sure what his plan was. It didn't really matter. What mattered was the here and the now, the poison in his veins and the pure hatred in his heart.

A barrage of voices drifted over to him as he slunk in through the doors. JARVIS was saying something in his ear, but he ignored his AI. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

"I've got nothin'…_goddammit_…" A voice, unfamiliar. Gruff and stressed and annoyed. There was no warmth in his statement, just worry.

"I can't believe this. Where the _hell _is he?" Another male voice, this one strained. It reminded Tony of a guitar string, tense and flat, but if you strummed it wrong then the whole song would be ruined.

"Calm down guys. We'll find him. Just keep looking." Female. Terse, calculating.

Unfamiliar. All of it unfamiliar.

He was eight years old. He was in the second grade and already he felt the weight of his whole world on his shoulders.

The strained one stammered. "Calm down? Please do _not_ tell me to calm down. My best friend is out there somewhere and you two assassin super spies couldn't keep him safe and now you can't find him. Do not tell me to _calm down_ because this is not my fault—"

He was fifteen years old. No one was listening, no one heard him when he cried out. No one cared. No one cared about him.

"Okay! Alright. We've already heard enough of that from Cap. Jesus. Don't you think we've been yelled at enough?" The gruff male one protested.

He was somewhere in his forties. He was trapped inside cave walls, and it was cold, all cold. He wasn't scared. He wasn't embarrassed. He wasn't _anything_. He just was. He was just a man with a big wallet and an empty, empty hole where his heart should have been.

"Yeah, well, Steve was right to be angry at you."

This had been a long time coming.

"Not _that _angry. The man looked like he was about to pop a blood vessel when he got off the plane."

He was jerking against the bonds and his wrists and ankles were bruising but no one was coming. No one would ever come. Because no one wanted to come. No one would want to find him. He wasn't worth saving. He wasn't worth any of it.

"Give the man a break. He's running on four straight days without sleep, so—" The female voice cut off. "Hold on a sec, what did you say, JARVIS?"

Tony took his cue.

When he finally walked into the common room, everything around him came to a complete and abrupt stop.

Lookie here. Dad and Peggy were having another one of their meetings again.

They were all crowded around the kitchen table; trading papers and talking tersely when he first approached, but as they saw him, they all froze. The room itself seemed to be holding its breath. The past blurred with the present, and he wasn't sure what was real and what was just a memory, but, well, he didn't care. He just wanted the pain to be someone else's for once.

He wasn't going to apologize for interrupting the party this time. He wasn't going to apologize for the nightmare.

"Tony?" Mom was there, and she was looking at him with an odd, almost worried look on her face.

"Tony, what the hell?" Dad sounded different. Almost surprised. Intense.

He knew his line here. As Peggy and Dad and Mom looked on, he said "I had a nightmare." His voice was monotone and dead.

He raised his hand and pointed his repulsor straight at Dad, listening to it power up. He wasn't going to let his father boss him around anymore. All the crap that had been flung at him from this man, all the nights of sleep he'd lost trying so desperately to come up with an idea that would change the world that he was living in. Every dream of jetpacks and every search for Rome and every crunch of ice. It wasn't worth it. And he'd been taking it and taking it and taking it for _so_ long. He was done. Utterly done.

"You proud of me yet?" He asked his father, and then opened fire.

Howard was more spry than Tony thought he would be. He ducked out of the way and the beam of energy hit the wall, blasting through plaster. "Tony!" Mom yelled, and she too was more alert and skillful than he would have predicted. She dodged out of the way as well. Papers on the table scattered everywhere as the room was flung into chaos.

Peggy was looking at him, and there was something about her that was really, really wrong. "Cap?" She yelled, "Steve, get in here!" Her voice was lower than it should be, her eyes a greenish hazel rather than brown.

Tony refocused his energy onto his father, who was even making his life hell from beyond the grave. He was still ruining relationships and bossing him around and showing to him that he would never be good enough. That he would never be the man that his father was.

That was an irony if Tony had ever seen one. Because maybe that wasn't the problem here. People had told him that Howard was a good man. And people had told him that he had just let the world get to him, let it swallow him whole.

So the problem wasn't that Tony couldn't become his father, it was the fact that he already _was_.

And Tony hated his father.

He fired his repulsors once more, and Dad narrowly avoided it. Dad skidded to the side, angling his chest so that the beam barely ripped the Kevlar covering his chest. Dad rolled to the ground and easily recovered, back on his feet in no time. He looked at Tony, incredulous, chest heaving, hands reaching around hesitantly for a weapon.

For a moment the fever faded. And this was not his father. The man standing in front of him was Clint.

His attention was yanked elsewhere, and Clint turned back into Howard.

"Tony!" Maria yelled, but Mom never called him 'Tony' like that. "Tony, what the hell is going on?" That was Dad, aghast. Dad tossed a looked toward Peggy. "Where's Cap?"

They were all scared and frozen in disbelief.

It hurt, somewhere deep inside. It all hurt.

It didn't matter.

Pain was anger, and his heart was and always would be black. That's what they'd shown him. That's what they'd told him.

Fuck them. Screw this all. He had nothing to prove to any of them. Not anymore.

"I don't—" Mom was cut off by another repulsor beam, and Tony took a mindless step forward. In the corner of his eye, he saw Dad shift positions, thinking that his attention was only on Mom. Which was a gross miscalculation on Dad's part, because Tony expertly twisted and suddenly Dad was in a corner and both of Tony's hands were pointed at him.

He'd wanted to stand up to his father his whole life.

Here goes nothing.

"What a world we live in." Tony said, packing as much malice behind the words as he could. He remembered hearing them, all those years ago. Alone in that stairwell.

He put full power into his repulsors and shot.

They exited his hands in slow motion, a long, thick beam of light headed straight in between Howard's wide eyes. As Dad lifted his hands in a defensive position in order to prepare for the blow, a sudden jerk of movement had the repulsors landing in drywall, instead of hitting his father. He jerked to the side to find a living, breathing Captain America staring at him, having, apparently, yanked Dad out of the way. Dad was on the floor, a handful of feet behind a strong, tall Captain America.

It was odd to see Cap out of uniform, because in the comics he was always in that spangled suit. Now, however, he looked severely unkempt. A t-shirt with coffee stains, rumpled at the waistline, an acid washed pair of jeans, a mess of rumpled blonde hair. The man didn't even have his shield.

The part of Tony that was caught in the past seethed, angry and broken and a little bit surprised. This man had been dead when it really mattered. He'd been dead when he should have been alive. And now he was alive and standing in front of Tony, all Tony wanted to do was make sure he stayed dead this time.

The part that was caught in the present acknowledged that Cap had been alive for a little while now, just gone. Gone like the rest of them. Tony wanted to make sure he stayed gone this time.

Past or present, it didn't matter. Hadn't he already said that? Nothing mattered but the anger. He was going to get what he wanted this time. No "hero" could stop him.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Tony asked. This was none of Cap's business. The man who destroyed his family should not be here. Should not be alive right now. Should still be in that ice.

(He was delirious and feverish. He was trapped in the past, and yet he still knew the details of his present. Thus, he didn't know why he was doing these particular things, he just realized they needed done.)

He aimed at Cap, both palms blazing with blue light.

Upon seeing this, Cap straightened, his eyes carefully taking in the weaponry. "Tony…" His voice was a calm warning. "I think—"

"Don't." Tony cut him off. "Don't pretend like you know me. You know my father. Not me."

The suit made a series of clicking noises. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you." Cap warned, his eyes glued to the Tony's hands.

Tony found this very, very humorous. "Why?" He pressed, taking a step forward. "What the fuck have any of you done for me?" He turned to his father because he could no longer figure out who he was really talking to. "Where were you when _I _needed you, huh? Why couldn't you have just comparing me to this. Son. Of a. Bitch." He marked this sentence with repulsor fires toward Cap like punctuation, which were easily deflected. "I won't be stepped on anymore."

"Tony!" Cap's voice was sharp and commanding, and Tony looked straight at the man. He felt the hatred that had been there all along, bubbling to the surface of sweat-slickened skin. This was it. He was going to kill him. And then Howard, and Maria, and maybe Peggy. Then their ghosts wouldn't haunt him anymore. Their words wouldn't hurt anymore. He was going to kill Captain America and _that _would be what saved him. Finding Cap in the ice wouldn't save him. Becoming _friends _with the man wouldn't either.

The only way out was straight through the heart.

And then Cap did something that surprised everyone in the room. With one blink and a tiny shake of his head, he sighed. "I'm not going to fight you."

"Good. Makes this easy."

"And you're not going to fight me." Cap added. "Or any of us."

"And why is that?" He asked with dark amusement. This joke kept getting better and better. "You gonna use _heroics _to talk me down, Cap? You wanna feed me placations and skip into the goddamned sunset?" Hot, bloody adrenaline had his fist swinging, but his delirious brain caused his actions to be slowed. Cap sidestepped the swing easily.

That, unfortunately, was fuel to the fire. It was getting hotter and hotter and more desperate with each passing moment. It wanted to _burn _and _burn _and…

"Are you going to bet the bigger person, the better man? Is that it?" His words escaped in a roar. He tried swinging again, but the other man was again too fast and dodged his flying fist.

"Cap—" Dad's voice was background noise.

"Clint." Cap responded, not taking his eyes off Tony. Tony swung again, and Cap danced away. "Don't. Interfere."

There was a noise of protest, but it was ground out by Tony's desperate need to feel the crunch of bones beneath his fist. He swung again, and this time clipped the side of Cap's arm. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Besides, the windows were fast approaching behind the Captain's back. Eventually, it would either be respond to Iron Man or meet a certain death, hundreds of feet below, on the darkening sidewalk.

"You're not going to fight me?" Tony's voice was unnaturally high, almost like he was caught between laughter and incredulity. "I'm going to kill you."

A simple fact. A naked statement. That's all it really was.

Behind him, breath caught in throats, low sounds of warning drifted across the room, but Captain America did not flinch. He did not wince.

He did not respond.

"Either way. I'm going to kill you." Tony repeated. He took a step, and Cap took another step backwards. Behind him, the sun slunk lower. The shadows turned blacker. The city carried on.

Tony took another step.

Cap stood his ground.

"This ends. Now." Tony said. Another complete truth, ground out from his anger. This was the end. He'd make sure of that. "Fight or die, Cap."

Steve, to his credit, still did not flinch. He did, however, respond. One of his hands flicked upward, and Tony, for half a millisecond was thrilled. They were going to fight. He was going to get his kill, and it would be justifiable and beautiful and perfect and it would _all end_. But then, he realized, when Cap's hand dropped back to his side, that it was communication to Dad and Mom and Aunt Peggy, behind him. Telling them not to step back. Signaling that the Captain had this under control.

"No." Steve said.

"Fight." Tony took another step.

"No."

"Fight!" Another step.

They were nose to nose.

"No."

Tony, with a low, steady mechanical whine, raised his palm and aimed it past Cap's head. Swiftly, suddenly, he shot out the window that was a mere foot behind Cap's back. Icy glass shattered everywhere, and a blast of cold air from the outside bashed against the two of them, combing itself through Cap's hair.

Swiftly, abruptly, Tony grasped Cap by the collar of his t-shirt.

"_Fight!_"

"_No."_

He shoved Cap backwards.

Time stood still and the delirium swung his brain until his vision darkened. But then, he became aware of Cap's form wavering between the hard ground of the tower and freefall. The balls of his feet scrambled for purchase on the edge, while nothing but air stood between the heels of Cap's feet and the ground. Tony still had him by the collar. Steve's hands were clenched around Tony's wrists, holding on for balance as his weight shifted backwards. The only thing holding the both of them up was that feeble connection at Cap's collar.

The wind, loud, dark, cold, roared through his ears.

"Fight." Instead of a shout, as it had been before, it was now a whisper. A silky plea. A broken, beautiful, horrible command.

Chest heaving, Cap responded, equally as quiet. "No."

He met Cap's eyes.

He shook his head. His voice was not afraid, and it was not sad. It was an echo. A shimmering reflection of what once was and what could have been. "Why?"

"Because you're a good man." Cap said importantly. "And you don't hurt your family."

Silence.

He looked down, far down through the windy torrent of air, to the specks of people walking along the sidewalk, to the ant cars.

He met Captain America's eyes again.

Tony let go.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:...<strong>

**So I am a horrible, dirty, rotten liar, and I also need to proofread my ANs more often. Because of this, there are several pieces of news that could either be seen as good or bad, depending. **

**One, I said that the "and the one time that changed his mind" was only three parts long? Yeah. Lol. That was a big lie. It's four parts. Whoops. Now, I apologize to those of you who are now like "WTF WHEN DOES THIS FIC _END_?" but I'm assuming that because of this chapter's *ahem* ending, it's probably a little bit of a good thing that there are two more parts instead of one. *ahem* The second thing I told you, about how I would be able to post all "three" parts in "three" days? That was another lie, because I have a life outside the internet (unfortunately!) and so the next part probably won't be up until Monday. I'M SO SORRY I SUCK A LOT RIGHT NOW I KNOW.**

**Anyway, thank you to all that have stuck with my dirty rotten lying butt and thank you to everyone that has read/followed/favorited/reviewed. **

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE ALREADY REVIEWED:**

**Huskygirl1998: *ahem* might not end well for Steve? Yeah...about that...*coughs***

**ErinKenobi2893: Thank you! I can't wait to see what you all think of what actually happened next...**

**Acae: *grins* why thank you!**

**Iron Robin: I think Tony was probably thinking the exact same thing that you were, tbh. (Well, not really anymore, but...he _was_ during the last chapter)  
><strong>

**eevee4ever2004: I love getting excited reviews like that. They make me feel like I've done something right. So thank you thank you thank you!**

**Can'tStopSmilingAllDay: Thank you! I'm glad you like it.**

**AnnaStormRogers: Don't worry about not reviewing! You don't have to. BUT, since you did, THANK YOU SO MUCH and I'm really glad you like it.**

**sailorraven34: Lol a unity retreat. That's gold. I would totally be cool if there was just an Avengers movie with no plot line other than "unity retreat." But yeah, the whole ten rings thing was originally going to be AIM, but in this reality Iron Man 3 hasn't happened yet, so Tony hasn't done anything to piss of AIM yet... **

**marykatebooks: Thanks for that. Usually my ANs are just me being my usual, insane self. My brain is, as they say, a bag of cats. It seems most people don't mind how all-over-the-place I am, so I guess you're going to keep getting my internal monologue after every chapter. :D**


	8. Chapter 8

A moment of clarity.

That's what it was.

And it all happened very, very fast.

Tony's finger slid from the fabric and tugged out from underneath Cap's grip on his wrists, and for a half a second, the blue eyes that met his were afraid, disappointed…and startled.

That's what got to him.

Steve had never expected him to actually let go.

It seemed like a long time ago when Steve was telling him that he didn't trust Tony. That was a _lifetime_ ago.

And now, the wind ripping through the building, the cold a freezing, unfriendly reminder that something was not right about the situation brought with it a moment of pure, freeing clarity.

Cap, pin-wheeling, struggling for balance with only inches beneath his feet and nothing to grab onto, finally began to fall. One foot slipped, drifting off into nothingness, and his balance was thrown backwards. He was going to fall.

And then Tony was there.

Gripping him as hard as he could at the wrist, Tony tried to counterbalance Steve and keep him inside the building. He pulled, essentially holding up most of Cap's weight, aside from the corner of one shoe-less foot still clutching the floor.

A moment of clarity.

A large part of him, the part that made adrenaline press against his veins and flushed his body with fever, told him to _fight_.

A small part of him told responded with a _no_.

Now, chest heaving, eyes watery from the dry, cold wind, Cap began, "See?" He was still dangerously close to falling, but his voice was calm and confident. The only thing he had was the support of Tony's hand gripping his forearm. Tony was keeping him balanced, but was not pulling him in. "Past or present, Tony." Cap was shifting underneath Tony's pressure, his hand enclosing around the metal near Tony's upper forearm. Tony's brain was too frazzled to understand what was going on. "You don't hurt your family."

Tony swallowed.

And then like the ebb and flow of an ocean tide, the moment of clarity faded away. Tony Stark, the superhero, didn't hurt his family. But this new version, Stark 2.0, didn't want to save them.

However, when Tony let go for a second time, Rogers was prepared for it, unfortunately. Tony had forgotten that the man standing in front of him was Captain America. So he was very, very surprised, when it a trick of acrobatics had Cap swinging around Iron Man from the wrist and somersaulting toward safety.

_Aw hell_, was all he could think, and then he was finally getting what he wanted in the _one moment_ that he hadn't been prepared for it. Cap was finally fighting back. He was yanked toward the innards of the building in the wake of Cap's trajectory, until he found himself on the floor, sprawled a few feet away from both Cap and the windy void outside the window.

He was distantly aware of shouting, of garbled voices and someone gasping his name, but it was all swallowed by the sound of the wind and the roar in his ears.

All Tony could feel was the beat of his heart underneath the suit. His nose had started bleeding again, so he swallowed against the thick taste of muddy rust. He closed his eyes, something rumbling inside his lungs, something dark and wet and terrifying whispering in his ears.

As Steve shakily climbed to his feet, Tony lifted one heavy arm and the suit clicked a few times as he started his next attack. He was a bit too obvious about it, but oddly enough, Cap was taking quite a while in getting to his feet, and the bullet that flew from the suit made an impact, through and through, right through the calf of his left leg.

Steve hit the floor with a thud, and now it was Tony who was trying to struggle to stand. He felt like he was going to throw up, for some reason, and the blood flowing from his nose was suddenly suffocating. He flipped the faceplate up, and was met with a flurry of wind and cold and fear.

As he swayed with dizziness, he paused, halting his attack. There was still something clear in the cold, something that encouraged him to stop and take a breath, letting the salty taste of the air fill his lungs. It was almost freezing; in some awful, poetic way, it made everything around him stand still. Like the world only consisted of the cold and the pain and the isolation

Meanwhile, Steve braced his hands against the floor and pulled himself up. He was talking as he did so. "You take," he began, hesitantly shifting the weight onto his left leg. Blood dribbled down the side from the bullet hole, "whatever crappy hand you're dealt and you _make _something out of it." Cap half a step forward, fumbling. Tony raised his hands to try and get him to stay where he was.

"Well, then, I fold." Tony snapped.

Cap thrust a hand through his hair, the only reaction Tony had gotten all night. Rogers was letting his emotions get nowhere near this; that much was obvious. "That's not what this is about." He pleaded. "It was never what this is about."

"Enlighten me, then." He demanded.

"I'm _trying_." Another fleeting glimpse of emotion, and then it was buried again. Rogers took a step forward, smoothing his features.

"Stay away from me." Tony ordered. "Don't you—don't come any closer."

"Calm down, Tony. Think about what you're doing." Cap did not look afraid. The smug bastard had the audacity to look concerned. "Think about this. Fight this."

"Why?" Always the _why_. As a scientist, he was supposed to ask all the important questions, to find the answers, even to the hardest questions. Tony had asked Rogers to enlighten him as to what this whole thing was about. A small part of Tony, the analytical, the logical side, told him he was about to find out.

"Because you are better than this." Rogers replied with easy conviction, like it was the truest statement in the world.

Tony almost killed him right then. "_Stop_!" He shouted instead, "Stop trying to change who I am. Stop trying to get me to follow your lead." He said, with the same conviction, "_I'm no hero_." His words were harsh but they were directed at himself. "Not like they were. Not like he was. I'm nothing, Cap."

Rogers shook his head. "I disagree."

Tony choked. "No you don't. You all know it. I'm just a fucking screw up, Cap. You're the hero. You're the one who deserves the praise."

Cap looked down at his feet, where a small pool of blood was forming. "I disagree." He said, and there was that single, joyless laugh again that Tony had heard countless times. It sounded dark and sad, and something within Tony never wanted to hear it again.

"Look around you, Tony." Rogers began, gesturing to the side, where the others were watching tensely. "Just look at them."

Tony unwillingly flicked his gaze to the side. Dad was looking at him intensely, his eyebrows folded in worry. Mom's eyes were softened, her lips popped open slightly. Their expressions hit them right where it counted, and when his knees trembled and he blinked away a sudden hotness, he realized that Howard and Maria and Peggy weren't in the room with him. That was Clint and Natasha and Bruce.

"We all have one thing in common, Tony. We get up just one more time than we fall. And that doesn't come from a shield or a suit. That comes from within." Steve stumbled into another step in Tony's peripheral vision. "What makes someone a hero? What makes any of us who we are? Our parents? Our past? Who we consider our friends?" Tony swallowed, and looked back at Cap. Cap shrugged. "Maybe." Tony could hardly breathe. "Maybe not. I don't pretend to have the answers for you, but I think being a hero is less about where you've been and more about where you're going. Being a hero isn't being the best or the brightest or the strongest. It's about knowing who you can save and who you should fight. It's not about the _mistakes_ you make; it's about who the _mistakes _make _you_.

"We're all flawed, Tony. But that doesn't make us worthless. That makes us human. And when we fall we help each other up." Cap looked at him importantly. "That's what we do. That's what _I'm _doing. So I won't fight you." There was something unspoken there, two words, that Tony could hear in the silence as if Cap had spoken them out loud. _Not anymore._

_ Not anymore._

He blanched.

"Steve?"

And Tony realized that this wasn't Captain America in front of him. This was someone he knew. This was a friendly. This was…this was… not someone he wanted to kill? What?

She'd told him that they were taking away the hero. She'd told him that they were leaving only the man. It was like Iron Man was the broken part of Tony, like a fractured bone, that they were going to reset and fix and heal over and take away.

But that's not how it works, is it?

Tony's neurons fired two different, opposite commands. One told his limbs to strike and the other stilled his hands.

"Yeah, Tony. It's me."

"But you—you were…?"

"In Prague, yes." Steve nodded, taking a careful step forward with his good leg, "I'm back now. I'm here. I won't leave." His words cut into him, and for a moment Tony was back in that cave, having open heart surgery. For a moment he was standing in a cemetery with nothing but the rain and two headstones. For a moment he was asking his mother not to leave him, and she was coolly detaching herself and leaving him at the front door.

There was that pain again, and he was surprised to feel it, after spending the past few hours in painless bliss. Fear caused him to try and push it down, bury it once more underneath the murky, depthless abyss of whatever he'd been injected with. Reality told him not to.

Tony didn't know what to do anymore.

"I'm not going to fight you, Tony." Steve's voice was far away, blinking through the haze of memories and pain, like it always had. _Like it always had_. " But I need you to fight this. You can't let it win. Just put the weapons down. You need to get to a hospital." Steve's voice was so calm and so easy and…and…condescending and patronizing.

In the end, it wasn't his mind that gave up. It was his body. Folding against the weight of the drugs, Tony found himself falling. The drop was much father this time.

He clutched to the hope even as it faded away.

His neurons fired one single, unanimous command.

Tony sniffed up more blood from his nose. "Don't tell me what to do." He said, the fire still eating at his brain.

He didn't feel like talking anymore—he was afraid he'd slur his words—so instead he just got right down to it. Before his brain caught up to him, energy was leaving his palms and making an impact through the thin cotton of Captain America's t-shirt. Idly, he noticed, that the wound was smoking.

Cap gave a strangled yelp, pushed momentarily backward by the momentum, as it burned through the flesh in the center of his chest, and then started forward. Cap absorbed another beam in the same spot, and something began to smell like burned meat.

He kept coming, dashing toward Tony, not straying from the path. Tony fired again, and the shot rang true.

But he was _still _coming. Three feet, two feet, a fourth repulsor blast, one foot…

Then Cap was upon him. One hand gouged into the metal at Tony's wrist and yanked his palm down, so that the next deadly beam would land in the floor. His gauntlet crushed, pressing against bruises and memories. Before he could react, however, the other hand fisted into a ball and swung upwards, straight into Tony's exposed face.

And then, once more, there was darkness.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Wow. Just wow. This turned from a "bro I wanna try one of those 5 plus one fics", in which I was planning on doing 5 separate, unconnected one shots and tying them all together with some fluffy little ending into...this. I have no idea how, but somehow it went from a mini-relationship study into a major, interconnected commentary about heroism in a major relationship study and I have no idea how I got here. However, I'm actually proud of something I've posted on this website, for once, and that's an achievement in and of itself. And I know I owe a lot of that to my readers, so I want to take this time and give you all internet hugs and big giant THANK YOU SO MUCH-es because I really really appreciate you. I've probably put more time into editing and cleaning up my writing than I did even writing it in the first place, and...just wow. You guys make me happy, and writing makes me happy, and I guess I just want to say thank you. So thanks.<strong>

**Anyway... one more chapter, and hopefully you guys will be as happy with this fic as I am, at the moment. **

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE REVIEWED:**

**ErinKenobi2893: Oh dear. The whole marshmallow torture sounds...interesting? I'd say unpleasant but I really really like marshmallows. But as to who kidnapped and drugged Tony? It was a small group of Ten Rings survivors, those that Tony couldn't take down. And they did it so they could "take away the hero." In case you missed that part. It was actually pretty important, so if you still are hazy on the details I can look back at what I wrote and try to make things more clear within the writing. Thanks!**

**Huskygirl1998: Thank you! But yes, I am a sucker for the cliffhanger and when I finished up editing the last chapter and this one I almost kept it all as one part, but then I was like, screw it, that line is perfect for a cliffhanger. **

**Mongoose: Well, thanks for the review now, then! I'm glad you're enjoying this fic! And Bromance is my weakness as well. After I get all this angst out of my system I'm prooooobbbbably gonna write another team fic. Because team fics are the bomb.**

**Beakers47: Poor Steve and Tony is right. This whole thing kinda sucks for the both of them. **

**AnnaStormRogers: I love that you guys are feeling bad for Steve too! It makes me happy, because the emphasis is on the Tony angst/whump, but I also wanted to include just a hint of this-sucks-for-steve-too-he's-just-better-at-hiding-it**

**Iron Robin: I'm glad you got my review! My computer originally said it didn't go through, and then it wouldn't let me get on to post another one, so I'm glad it worked out. It was a good story. Anyway, thank you thank you thank you for allllllllll your reviews! Because they make my day, too**


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: WOW, okay, this was supposed to be posted last week and I'm so so sorry but here's the final part :D**

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><p>Tony opened his eyes with a strangled gasp.<p>

What had he _done_?

He'd almost killed Clint and shot repulsors at Natasha. And took his anger out on Bruce.

And… And _Steve_.

It had all been a part of a very bad dream, a warped delusion. But the fact that he was seeing shades of his past and his anger had been forcibly intensified until it was titanic didn't excuse the fact that he had tried to kill his team. He tried to kill the some of the _only people _that had ever mattered in his life.

_You're a good man, Tony. And you don't hurt your family._

Oh, but he did. He fucked up everything he had in his life. He disappointed his parents. He couldn't save them when they died. He drove Obie toward betrayal. He made his childhood idol hate him. He couldn't even do the whole SHIELD thing right; he'd failed the whole pre-test thing to be an Avenger, after all.

Tony blinked at the darkened hospital ceiling and felt like complete and utter shit.

"You're awake."

Steve's voice made him close his eyes again, against the pain, against the regret, against the memories. His heart picked up a few beats per minute in the monitor somewhere above his head. He wasn't ready for this. Oh God, he wasn't ready.

"No I'm not." He managed, trying to sound like his regular self, and not the shell of a man that he had been reduced to. Obviously, he fell short, and his voice came out cracked and breathy.

What the hell was he supposed to say? How was he going to make this—any of this—right again?

It wasn't just the whole shooting him in the leg and the…the repulsors. It was _all _of it. It was everything, from _You failed them _to _Everyone that cares is dead_, to fucking _letting go _on the edge of his building.

Now that he was sane again and not dosed with evil juice, he knew that he'd really, _really _screwed up this time.

Warmth traveled from his fingers to his palm, and Tony flicked surprised eyes open to see one of Steve's hands on top of his own on the hospital mattress. He couldn't bring himself to look at Steve in the face. "What are you doing here?" He rasped, his chest closing around his voice.

"Where else would I be?" The question was so honest and sincere, that despite trying to resist, Tony found himself looking at Cap.

Steve was seated at the edge of an uncomfortable-looking hospital chair, elbows on his knees, leaning forward. His eyebrows were pressed together, his eyes dark and unreadable. The darkness in the room cut shadows that looked like bruises on his face, and Tony couldn't stop his eyes from looking lower.

Steve hadn't changed clothes.

There was a hole in his t-shirt. It was ringed with blood.

_Past or present, Tony, you don't hurt your family._

The dark didn't permit him to see the skin beneath the shirt, which was both a very good thing and a very bad thing.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut once more. He could feel his heart in his throat. "No, Steve. What are you doing here?" If his voice wasn't broken the first time he spoke, it was definitely broken now. It came from the back of his throat like he'd been gargling with sandpaper.

Part of him wanted to push the other man away again. _Leave. Leave before I can hurt you anymore than I already have. _The other part didn't want him to leave. Had never wanted him to leave.

Steve began slowly. "I got a call, about three days ago, now. Hill said something along the lines of 'Just so you know, Tony went missing.' I blew my cover, took the next flight home." Steve shrugged, Steve's hand drifting away from Tony's hand. Steve dragged it down his face in obvious stress. Tony wasn't sure if he was grateful for partition or if it just made him want the contact even more. "You just…disappeared. There one minute, off every single radar the next. Nat and Clint have been everywhere, combing through Manhattan, trying to locate you. I've been running point with Fury. You scared the hell out of all of us, Tony." He added, "But, we got a ping when you summoned the suit, and SHIELD sent a unit to that apartment you were in over in Princeton. By the time they got there, you were already gone. And when you landed, um, at the tower, it didn't take much to realize that something was wrong. That you weren't you. So now you're on the helicarrier, in the medical bay. Everything's going to be alright." _You gonna use heroics to talk me down, Cap? You wanna feed me placations and skip into the goddamned sunset? _Tony shivered. The self-loathing was bone-deep, in that moment, despite how true those particular words still were.

There was silence in the room for a few moments, and Tony looked with glazed eyes up at the black ceiling and felt Steve's concern like a blanket that was _smothering _him. He didn't deserve it. "Why?" He asked, and hated himself even more.

_(Fight this._

_ Why?_

_ Because you are better than this.)_

Tony could _feel _the eye-roll through the darkness, "How are you doing?" Cap replied, in lieu of an answer. "They pumped your stomach. Put you on fluids. They're trying to flush whatever's in your system out before it does any more damage. You still feeling sick?" Then, he hesitated, apologetic in his words, "I might have…slightly broken your nose."

Tony grunted, processing this information and filing it away. And then he spoke again. "Why did you come back?" Tony didn't get swayed that easily. _"Why_?"

"Tony—"

"I almost killed you. I almost killed all of you. I would have, too." He looked away from Cap, back toward the dark ceiling, listening to the beeps for a few more moments. "I wanted to." He whispered. "I've hated you for so long. You and Dad and…"

"I know." Two words, so full , so open, so honest. So forgiving. "God, Tony…" Steve said, his voice so hollow that Tony had to look at him once more. Steve leaned back, one hand rubbing roughly down his face. "I'm so sorry." He said with emotion, fingers pressing into his eyelids. "I never should have left. Not when you still needed me." _Not when you still needed me._

_When we fall we help each other up. That's what we do. That's what I'm doing. _

And it was in that moment that Tony realized that Steve _understood_.

_That_, that _right there_, was "why." That was the answer to every single "why" he'd asked in the past twenty-four hours.

Why Steve was there. Why Steve was _always_ there. Why he hadn't stopped picking Tony off the ground and hadn't stopped being there for Tony even when all Tony could do was push him away. How even when Steve had been pushed to his breaking point he'd only requested time off and hadn't stormed out and quit the team.

Steve knew what it was like to have the nightmares, to look into the abyss and wonder what it would feel like to fall just one last time. How it felt to watch everything around you leave. How it felt to have nothing. How it felt to desperately need to prove himself to others.

Steve could see Tony's cracks and flaws for what they were. Because of that he could look past the biting wit and the not-so-beautiful walls that Tony put up around himself, and see that what lay behind the ramparts was something desperately in need of being fixed. Something that was dark and fresh, and covered and _alone_. He could see that Tony was afraid to love and to live because he felt like he could never afford those luxuries. Steve could see that the Captain-America-hatred that Tony had was only ever directed toward the cowl, and the _real _hatred, the dangerous hatred, was for the man that hid beneath the metal suit.

Pepper and Rhodey always had been able to. But they were outliers. Because humanity is so putrid that people who saw him for what he truly was would only ever look at him and say _Anthony, don't._ Or, _Anthony, Mommy has a plane to catch. _Or _Dammit, Tony, this one is completely on you_. Because opening up and letting people see was only an excuse to invite in those that want to exploit it.

How it felt to be a hero in other people's eyes, but in those eyes that mattered? Nothing but a speck.

Steve. Understood.

And so Steve had always been that helping hand up. Despite the fact that Tony had never had anything but hatred for him, Steve had never given him anything but support.

Because they were like two poles on the same magnet, different, but the same in all the ways that mattered.

It hit him like a brick wall to the back of the head. It gripped him like a hand at his wrist. It fucking _punched him in the face_ as hard as it possibly could.

Steve Rogers was probably the best friend he'd ever had.

The epiphany slammed into him, but Steve was still oblivious.

"I don't blame you." Steve said, reaching for Tony's hand again. Tony was glad to feel the warmth there. He manipulated his fingers, sliding his palm against Cap's fingers, hooking his fingers between Steve's. He would later blame this little moment on the drugs, but as for now, all he needed was to feel that physical contact. To be grounded solely by touch. To feel, for once in his life, something more than alone.

Maybe it was the after-effects of the drugs, or the new drugs that he was on, or the dulled, murky atmosphere of the room, but for once, Tony didn't feel like he was falling.

He was standing on firm ground and gravity was keeping him there.

"You should." Tony said, giving up the pretense that he was _okay_. He was wrecked.

He remembered every screaming match that went on between them, every threat and angry promise. Every step that went too far. _I know guys with less than that worth ten of you_. Every clenching of fists and muttering of breath and each pain as the knife was pushed deeper. _They should have left you in that ice, Rogers. God knows you were more useful to us there. _

"I think I can make that decision for myself, thanks." Steve said, "And so will they."

Tony was confused for a moment, and then he realized that the dim, quiet atmosphere didn't just consist of Steve's murmurs or the low beep of the heart monitor.

To his left, underneath a dark beige curtains that were drawn over a large window, sat a short couch that probably had squeezed one Avenger too many on. Natasha was pressed against the rail of one side, her head resting on a closed fist, her face soft in sleep. Bruce was next to her, head thrown back against the wall, glasses askew, pen mark smudged on his face. Head propped on Natasha's lap, Clint lay, sprawled. His face was half mashed into Natasha's thigh, drool dripping onto her black jeans. (She'd probably stab him for that later, but for now one of her hands rested in his hair.) Clint's feet were kicked up on Bruce's lap, and his shoes lay on the floor, neatly arranged. Bruce had probably taken them off for him. Thor was, for all intents and purposes, on the floor. His back was supported by one leg of the couch, and his arm was tangled with one of Bruce's legs. Thor's mouth was lolled, and he was chewing on his hair in his sleep. Every once in a while Thor would snort and Bruce would make this little _mew_ noise and Natasha would let one corner of her mouth perk up.

Tony learned two facts about his life in that moment.

One was about his father.

Maybe in looking for all those years, in turning over ice boulders and desperately shouting through the frozen tundra, Howard hadn't been looking for Captain America.

No, Howard was looking for himself.

Howard had lost something so vital in his life, in that war, and he was desperate enough that all he had wanted to do was to find it again. And it wasn't just Captain America, it wasn't just the Howling Commandos. Howard had lost himself. Sometime between the Manhattan Project and that frozen summer Tony had spent with his father on that boat, Howard had lost something so vitally his own to the carnage, he was too afraid to look at himself in the mirror. So Howard had internalized it and batted it away and let this obsession take over him, let this ridiculous notion that if he could just find the lifeless corpse of an old friend, he would have all the answers he needed. Tony knew now that such a feat would have been impossible, but Howard tried anyway. It was never anything personal. But when Howard failed, he couldn't stand himself, let alone someone that wanted to badly to be like him. Someone who wanted so badly to gain his love and respect, when Howard felt like he didn't deserve to ruin another life, after so many thousands had died. It was flawed logic, but after all this shit, Tony understood it.

He wondered how long he'd been trying to compare himself to Cap. He wondered when his father's respect had turned into his own hatred. Being a hero, he learned, isn't about who you want to be or who you've been. It's about who you are. Deep down, on the inside. Who you are, all the way to the core. And Tony Stark was not his father, and he was not Captain America. But that didn't make him any less a genius, billionaire, philanthropist, superhero.

He wondered how long he'd been trying to assign blame for this whole situation. But how do you blame someone for something so flawed in the first place? How did he ever look at the gray areas and look at one person in the eyes and say "this one's on you"? The truth is, there is no winning a battle like this.

There is only loss. On all sides, from every aspect. Just loss.

The second, and perhaps more relevant fact that Tony gathered from this sight, was that he was on the other side of that wall.

He felt the warmth, and this time it wasn't through a thin panel of plaster. This time he was a part of that world. He could feel it in the swell of his heart, the thickening lump in his throat. He could taste it through the darkness, how it was like sugarcane, sweet with an aftertaste of something pleasant.

He belonged.

He had something tangible, something that he could reach out and _feel_. And that was, in the end, all he'd ever wanted.

He turned his attention back to Steve. "Why are you the only one awake?" His voice was impossibly more hoarse. It didn't help that the Avengers were all out, obviously worn down to exhaustion. It didn't help that he had found Pepper, curled up in a chair beside Steve, wearing a leather jacket that was obviously Cap's because it was way too big for her.

"Didn't want you to wake up alone." Steve said with a shrug that exposed a bit of a burn mark on his chest. _You're a good man. And you don't hurt your family_. "Figured you'd internalize it, like you always do."

There was the presence of something on his chest that crushed him, something warm and flighty and whole. Tony turned away, listening to the deep breathing of his team, and when he closed his eyes this time it was not out of embarrassment, and it was not out of fear, and it was not from the drugs. This time he closed his eyes and breathed in the warmth until he could feel it gathering at the corner of his eyes.

"Fuck you, Rogers." He said, feeling the first trace of hotness spill down his cheeks. His chest ached in a way that it had ached all his life, but at the same time it didn't ache at all. The water at his tear ducts traced slow, hot lines down his cheeks like he was eight years old again.

It would be okay.

It would _all _be okay.

Because Captain America could save the world, and he could save his family, but there was so much more that he had already saved. So much more.

"You too." Steve replied, a grin hinting at the edges of his voice.

Tony hated him in that moment.

But he loved him a little bit, too.

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><p><strong>AN:...<strong>

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**Okay, so now that we've reached the end I no longer have that much to say. Other than the fact that obviously there's a lot more story to be told here, and if you're willing to stick with me I'm going to post a companion piece from Steve's POV. If not, I feel that this could probably be a suitable ending and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for sticking through me through all this madness. If you DO want to stick with me, the next part will be entitled "Just Not Enough" and I will begin posting it hopefully in the next week or so. (No promises, exams are kicking my ass right now). It'll take place a little bit during the time period of this one but probably mostly after the events of this. **

**In conclusion, I want to thank all of your for your support and responses and everything that you've done. Hats off to all of my readers :D**

**See you on the flip side,**

**~Migs**

**TO THOSE THAT HAVE REVIEWED**

**BTW, the response on the last chapter made me goopy with happiness, so I want to thank all of you. You kind, sweet, wonderful human beings, you. **

**TheJollyMonster: Yeah... a lot happened. Haha, that's why it got split up into four chapters instead of just one. But I hope you enjoyed this last chapter!**

**Huskygirl1998: Dawwwww. Thank you so much. I write the kinda things that I would like to read, and I probably will never get enough of the Steve and Tony bromance. **

**ErinKenobi2893: Alright, I see your point. Although the only line they stole, the "and our mutual friend had it right... 'how can they fight us, when they're too busy fighting you?'" was from Loki. Thank you for the review!**

**SlySouls: That was a very kind review, and I'm glad that you posted it. :D The "its hard to find fics as amazing as yours" part made my grin like a crazy person.**

**The Alien of Pluto: Yeah, that was definitely one of the reviews that made me goopy with happiness. You're too nice and I'm undeserving but THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU OKAY?**

**AnnaStormRogers: Haha thank you! I'm glad that you liked it.**

**Iron Robin: NO THAT WASN'T CORNY that was actually perfect. The world needs more people like you. You are perfect ;D**

**thatfitgeek: I know! I was ten seconds from adding a really corny fluffy ending but I figured that there was absolutley no possible way I could make this ending any happier than it already was, because in reality Tony was right when he said that he'd really really screwed up this time. Granted, it wasn't his fault, and several good things came out of it (ie. he realized Steve's worth) but at what cost? There have been a lot of things that have been said or that have have been done, even in the last few chapters, that are going to be difficult to come back from. **

**sailorraven34: THANK YOU YOU ARE THE BEST NEVER LET ANYONE TELL YOU ANY DIFFERENT, OKAY?!**

**Beakers47: and thank YOU for reviewing. Sorry this chapter wasn't updated all that quickly! (I sorta forgot...whoops)**

**Qweb: Thank you! And again, sorry for the wait :D**

**Can'tStopSmilingAllDay: Yay! That was my intent, because I feel like Tony and Steve's relationship is so "dynamic" and "complex" and i definitely wanted to capture that.**


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